At the sign of the drunken goose
by Chiara Cadrich
Summary: The Landlord of the Drunken Goose welcomes you in his common hall to hear horror tales gleaned along the greenway, or gentle saucy rhymes from the Shire. Today : The tale of a cooper.
1. Welcome at the inn

**Welcome at the Inn**

\- "Good evening, my good fellow! My companions and I are looking for an inn for tonight. Could you tell us..."

The gaunt farmer interrupts his work. Resting his hoe for a moment, he painfully straightens, casts a frightened glance at the rider and, lifting his cold-shivering finger, points at the cobbled road without saying a word. A wide and short gossip, ruddy and shyless, empties her basket of onions in her cart and puts her thick eyeglasses on. After a carefull inspection, she hails the conveyor:

\- "Stride along the King's cobblestones. On Castle square, no possible mistake, you'll find for sure. "

The captain of the company, somehow abashed, nods a thank and leads his caravan of overloaded and exhausted mules. Soon the road runs on a well-kept pavement along Thalion's first huts, from which emerge disheveled poor devils in the midst of sheep. The convoy passes under a wooden porch and enters the town proper, protected by a high fence on a ridge. Climbing the slope in the middle of cottages and workshops, they reach the square, lined with the only real town houses.

The riders stop over, seeking the inn.

The facades of the square houses display their past pomp. Engineered beams are maintained with makeshift dyes. The tailor's storefront exposes some spruce dresses but his workshop hardly sells utility clothes; to survive the owner's great-grandfather also had to improvise weaver, but the current tailor jealously keeps the expertise of his predecessors. The apothecary once sold subtle imported compositions from Harad. Now the herbalist survives distilling remedies and perfumes himself, with local products. Times are tough but Thalion's craftsmen retain, as a talisman ennobling their days, the memory of past glories and the know-how of their ancestors.

Northward, an imposing building of fair stones and red brick borders the square with its powerful slender facade. The castle of Thalion, once the summer residence of the kings of Tharbad, still casts a protective aura.

Gregarious, the mules have stopped in the center of castle square, tight like a flock shivering at the approach of night. No hostel! Yet it is time to find shelter. Twilight clears its bright colors one by one, still blazing for a few moments with warm and caring tones.

-« No possible mistake… ! », mutters the disappointed leader. The former captain is in charge of a few mules, three fighters and precious commodities to be sold on the greenway. He must make a decision quickly. He hesitates for a few moments, when the oak castle gates open noisily:

\- "Hear ye, Hear ye! Good pilgrims conveying from Far South!"

A figure in livery advances, brandishing a lantern on the porch of the castle. The character, lanky and dignified, harangues the surprised traders with histrionics:

\- "In quest for bellydrench, hearth roaring or sack hitting? The sign at the Drunken Goose regally accommodates riders and their mounts! Right this way, my lords! 1"

The man, dressed with a jabot, multiplies the bows, his lantern held up at arm, while praising the establishment with the distinction of a butler:

\- "The castle's estables may cater for thy mounts, arroy and cargo in our faithful guard. Shalt thou aucthorise thy guidance up to thy dormitory?2 "

The numb understanding of the caravan captain finally lights up with a flash of lucidity: the hostel is housed within the castle walls! The talkative and sententious bailiff is none other than the inn's doorman. With an anguished doubt as to the rates of the institution, he reluctantly gives the order to proceed to the porch, lit by the crepuscular rays.

The porter - who despite his nice outfit, is also the groom, waiter, room boy, butler and handyman - encourages the riders by clever allusions to the comfort of Thalion's castle, former royal residence within the famous town fair... with the dignity of a noble house herald, he leads the guests to the stables in the light of his lantern.

In a corner a sow wallows, surrounded by a dozen fighting piglets. Two lean cows, dowagers of the house, lazily chew their hay, next to two donkeys and a huge draft horse. The stable boy lodges the mules and horses in large stalls, souvenir of the royal stables. After helping the travelers to unload their bales in a shed, he entrust the key to them and without giving them time to negotiate the rates, he leads them into the yard and into the main building.

.oOo.

The travelers enter the old keep, after a flight of worn pink marble steps, by antique double doors of immaculate black wood, speckled with fine silver stars arranged in a circle.

\- "Welcome under the Sign of the Drunken Goose!"

A huge blond guy welcomes the travelers, behind his bar resting on a half-dozen barrels of beer. The man tries to put on a fair face but the scar that disfigures the left side of his jaw would scare a goblin, despite his shrewd gaze. The former captain knows to gauge men of war. The worn white shirt of the tenant, surprisingly cut, betrays a distant lands' adventurer. They exchange a short military nod and the householder, resigned and lucid, tells with a kind gesture:

-"Master Gigolet will take care of you! Welcome!"

The huge room extends under four vaults, all of which are based on the same central pillar of pink sandstone. Massive candelabra light the center of the room. Candles burn off a tallow smell and black smoke, in addition to the thick fumes from the enormous fireplace with a poor draw. Large logs end up burning under a pin topped with a sheep oozing its fat and sizzling pleasantly smelling promises.

The porter - Master Gigolet – approaches the captain, with the obsequious and competent air of a palace bailiff:

\- "Well came home!3 Messer Finran, sire of the Sign at the Drunken Goose, makes thy Lordship aware thy pouches be hoisted up to thy barracks. The company, seated in the vast hall of the hosts of said tavern, would delightly swoon to be told thy exploits and deeds from distant baronies by mouth of such distinguished travelers."

The distinguished travelers exchange incredulous looks:

\- "He said what?"

They had been assured that along the greenway, they would be able to make themselves understood with westron. The captain, coming from the minor nobility of Imloth Melui, has got some letters in Dúnadan tongue. He explains to his comrades that their luggage was brought to their room, and the guests would love to hear some news from the South.

To tell the truth, the approximate syntax and pompous turns of the usher, make poor justice to the Sindarin tongue that once flourished at the court of Tharbad. Yet master Gigolet does his best to perpetuate the memory of a sophisticated time, but his ancient vocabulary and noble-like expressions produce a mixed impression on the travelers. The captain thinks he's hearing an offspring of a kitchen boy, aping the manners of the castle nobility in its heyday. But he wonders how much can the food and shelter cost, so coated with precious and adulterated verbiage. Thus he seeks to cut short:

\- "You are very urban, master Gigolet. We are tired and should bed after a quick and light meal."

The smooth and emotionless face of the stilted butler yet lets out a disapproving eyebrow thrill:

\- "Thy Lordship, do thou allowest the home-legislating courteous charter be told?

\- He said what?

\- I think he wants to state the rules of the hostel."

The caravan leader represses a temper of his three colleagues, who expect some rogue craftiness:

\- "Do, master bailiff, we are listening carefully.

\- Coins be of good Kings' alloy. Shame and discourtesy oblige winasse punishment for whole hall. Specious business be mended in alcoves out of Great Hall. Good feeding be halved, for him narrating a tale of nice outfit, for her singing a lay or gigue dancing, over the approval of our hall. May fresh ale offset truthful news – But behold bashing fibs!"

The dazed travelers are not sure they understand. The captain translates the best he can:

"Counterfeit money is denied. We must behave, otherwise pay a drink for everybody. Uh... no trade in the common room. The meals are half price for anyone who tells a great story, uh… or sings or dances, for the company in the great hall. And the drinks are free to anyone who provides for real news!

\- But why so? Whence come stories, songs, dances and girls? Have we fallen into a shanty? ", objects a traveler suspiciously and threateningly towards the poor butler, who struggles to maintain decorum.

His colleague – who may not be the brightest fellow – would fancy some free pints, but he suspects some commercial trickery:

-"What is this place all about, Captain? This ale thing isn't quite clear…"

The usher tries to maintain his dignified manners but his indignation overwhelms his temper:

\- "Messer Finran is infastuated with enscripted tales. His hostellery, cheekily and prolixly renowned, is attended by worthy gaulters4 telling chosen lays. At vespers, Thalion's frank community moots around a warm blaze and fallacious or thruthfull tales. Elders meditate in remembrance, petties raise in letters. The tales of our glorious past lull the nocturnal fears and firm up our brotherhood. No gaiety girl around!"

The captain, wishing to avoid any annoying incident, still laboriously assumes the translation:

\- "Master Finran likes litterature… uh… which is books. He attracts every able-minded around to tell good stories in his inn. Every evening, Thalion's free men gather around a good fire and tales, fictions or true news. Old people tell their souvenirs, children learn to read. He says that sharing their glorious history strengthens team and undertaking spirit. Well well… it seems a bit strange but I think this inn is respectable."

The former captain understands why bind the community together. But Thalion's literate gatherings leave the chief caravan merchant, quite unmoved. He has not travelled two hundred leagues through Rohan and Dunland to tease the muses. His duty is to lead commercial transactions.

The good usher sighs – here is another band of uncultivated swordsmen and venal traders, who must be circumvented the proper way! He softens his syntax while adding in a more confidential tone:

-"If you come here, as I believe, for some commercial business, weaving bonds with local traders might prove useful. Many are present tonight, as every evening."

Reluctant, the captain thinks hard. He checks his purse. After all, having their meal at the common room would fit his finances. With a downcast mustache and low shoulders, they are slowly heading to the grand hall when the usher adds:

\- "The custom recommends our guests to take on their best humor before appearing in the great hall!"

The four men waddle while wringing their hands and elbowing to remain at the rearguard. Their smiles wrinkle when the travelers discover their public.

Two or three dozens bourgeois and farmers observe them with gentleness and interest. Peasants with breeches placidly joke with several craftsmen, recognisable thanks to the tools hanging at their belt. A handful city-dwellers, with sober and a bit worn dresses, converse meaningfully in a low voice. Most remain standing up, warming in front of the hearth, a beer pint in hand. Dignified and cordial, all obviously live in the village or nearby, and are not ashamed of staring at the travelers with curiosity.

A little further away, three Dwarves eat silently - which is without pronouncing any word, but the ustensils, their chewing and their swallowing, without forgetting their belches of satisfaction, make as much noise as a forging mill in full activity! It seems the dwarves pay full price for their peaceful meal…

A watchful silence settles when the travelers come in. The looks, most friendly, some a bit derisive, converge towards the caravan chief who sighs with resignation. His stooges shine neither by the academicism of their rhetoric, nor by the correctness of their song. And as for dancing, better not think of it… the loyalty and courage of his comrades show only a weapon in their hand.

-"You are the chief…" seem to say their elusive looks.

Overcoming an unpleasant cold sweat and a strange sensation of knotted stomach, the caravan captain commands an ale, recollects his memories about a Harlond boatman song, and here he goes…5

.oOo.

_Now you know why, at the Sign of the Drunken Goose, tales are nurtured, news are reported and these who wield them are welcome. Master Gigolet and Sire Finran are collecting some of these tales in the next chapters. _

_See thou soon !_

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Are you looking for dinner, fireside and bed? The inn at the Drunken Goose royally accommodates riders and their mounts! This way, Gentlemen!

2 The castle stables will shelter your mounts, their equipment and loads, safely guarded. May I show you your room?

3 Welcome

4 From Galtier, joke-teller

5 The « middle-aged » expressions of this fic come from very misty souvenirs about Renaissance texts, and when needed, pure and simple imports from medieval french, with very thin linguistic or historical credibility.


	2. The drunken goose

**The drunken goose**

_At the sign of the Drunken Goose…_

The second assistant tailor clears his voice. Gently nudging at him, his boss, a man with a broad presence, discreetly said to him: "What about enlighten our fellows travelers about the beginning of our inn ?". He grumbled somehow but the tailor's daughter encouraged him with a wink. Shyly, the second assistant stepped forward in the light of the candelabra and raised his voice, warming his tone with several clichés.

.oOo.

"I am telling you about a time that only wizards remember. The good town of Thalion woke up at the clear sound of trumpets. At dawn, the garrison hoisted the standard of the kings of Cardolan, when the exuberant court of the young sovereign came to our provincial citadel, to escape the unhealthy summer heats of Tharbad. Carters drove up the greenway from the market-city to the Arthedain towns, supplying with luxury goods, its haughty noblemen, crafty traders and boisterous scholars.

Indeed, during winter, the slowed traffic gave back its provincial gentleness to the charming burgh alleys. Craftmen devoted in intense cold tasks, clay was dug under snow, cartwrights and ironworkers mended tools and furniture along the short daylight. The pig was joyously killed for the family to prepare sausages, smoked pallet and saltings in the courtyard, under the watchful eye of Grand'Ma. On his shoulders, the castle's venator brought some deer that would be welcome at the hospital of Nienna's sisters.

The numb castle smoked from all the chimneys above the haughty towers and the potbellied buildings. For several years, it has been accommodating an old dowager, a great-aunt of the king of Cardolan, abandoned there by mistake after the summer heats, when the court had gone back to Tharbad. The poor lady had been forgotten in this province when a major art event had suddenly called the young idle nobility back to the capital.

The first week, she had indignantly refused to write and beg for what she deserved by right of her peeress' rank. Then a gentleman had come to show apologetic in the name of her royal nephew and nonetheless liege-lord. He had gone back empty-handed, since the great-aunt accepted no less than flat apologies by her rascal grand-nephew in person. Then the forgiveness demands had become scarce, hardening the lady's resentment and stubbornness. Aunt and nephew saw each other only next summer, when the young monarch's court brought again its splendors to Thalion, to flee the Gwathlo's nick-bricks and miasma.

The great-aunt haughtily received her nephew, acting as the castle's lady and reminding him of his duties. The young king had matured and gained some confidence while freeing himself from the tutelage of his father's former counsellors. The chancellor, a favorite of his aunt, had fallen into disgrace. And indeed the old lady's remonstrances irritated the king.

It came to his royal mind that he should assert his authority by making an example of his own family. He publicly took act of the decision of his beloved aunt to remain at Thalion, since her health had prevented her from answering her king's call for a whole year. In his great wisdom, the king would entrust her with a task fitting the lady's will and weak health. She was granted Thalion's castle as a dowery. She would dwell there around the year and administrate the fief and the hospital, while reporting to him.

Thus was the lady skillfully assigned to isolation, far from the court, its golden splendors, festivities and intrigues. After a short phase of disbelief, she had been consuming with indignation. Her favorites turned away from her as weathercocks in a changing wind. Acrimony did not help. The following summer, decreased to stewardship tasks, she was so busy organising the royal sojourn, that she ended up welcoming the court's departure with relief.

That is how the dowager reached some form of detachment, if not serenity. Her difficulties had won the affection of Thalion's inhabitants, who appreciated her wise management of the royal hospital and her enlighted rule. The years went by, the aging and resigned lady attended to her duties, having given up even the dream of marrying. Under her friendly authority, the town lived at the rhythm of a provincial austerity. Feasts and fairs where obviously not forbidden, but one laughed far less frankly than formerly. The propriety of the customs somehow stiffened the country's gentleness. The ribalds were turned into nurses or left the town. The poor solitary lady's boredom seemed to influence the atmosphere in town. Since that time, Thalion has kept a kind of courteous independence and decent simplicity of a provincial main town.

.oOo.

A winter evening, during which loneliness had been nagging the dowager more than usual, a poor knight came to pass the sleepy burgh, and asked for hospitality at the castle.

These were happier times: hospitality and courtesy duties were not neglected – fear had not yet invaded Eriador's baronies. The horseman proudly held his hunting spear, and his arms bore a device of modest but brave reputation. The antique rules of hospitality were observed.

Damsels were dispatched to serve him, as fits a noble house. To tell the truth, the damsels rushed by themselves, since distractions and boys were scarce at the castle. The knight was relieved of his mount, led to the dwelling, disarmed, undressed, bathed, brushed, perfumed, combed and dressed with a magnificent satin mantel. Only the jealous competition between the damsels prevented any disruption, annoying for the knight's renown or the castle's reputation.

But the youth's laughter encouraged the lady to revive somehow. She gave orders for a supper of good taste, with splendor but no ostentation. Yet, for the occasion, she went so far as to indulge a sweet revenge – she had the most prestigious wines taken from her great nephew's cellar, put on her guest's table.

When the knight laid his homage at her feet, the lady thought he had a vigorous, elegant and youthful demeanor, despite his grey hair. A slight nearsightedness gave the rider a dreaming gaze and ample gestures, the lady found quite charming. Somehow exhilarated by the courteous eloquence and the deferential manners of her guest, the lady listened to his deeds. Lulled by the knight's witty loquacity, and seduced by his decent modesty, she began to dream about sweeter and less lonely mornings.

The company of the gallant brave seemed so pleasant to the dowager during supper, that at the end of the evening, the rarest bottles had been unsealed. The knight rocked on his chair, trying to preserve his noble bearing and colorful eloquence, while the pale dowager, sweating, got rid of her white tulles to unveil her neck, she believed charming but was too slender and long.

After the meal, the poor old lady, whose faded charms and slight coquetting had hardly touched the errant gentleman's heart, appeared at her balcony, in hope for a moonlit and romantic serenade. But the knight was snoring in his room, brought down by the heady wines, while the dowager caught a cold and had to go to bed.

The next morning, the whole castle square was laughing at the hapless and drunken goose, exposed at her balcony a winter evening. When the gallant rider bowed before her, she hid her illness and received him with a regal courtesy. After nightcap, the knight went fighting the enemies of the kingdom, bearing some mysterious white tulles at his spearhead.

.oOo.

Several days later, the poor old lady succumbed to a vicious fever.

The whole town mourned her « sovereign » and gave her funerals respecting her noble wishes: sober, dignified and unanimous.

Quickly the royal nephew took possession of the dowery, he had knowingly given to a childless relative.

The rights she had granted to the town of Thalion were immediately denied, and the royal justice recovered the full blindness of its fast rigor. The hospital itself had to close quickly – the staff could fortunately move into an inn that was founded on castle square.

In remembrance of the lady who, in her despair, had wisely governed the town, the innkeeper was about to give her name to the new establishment. The royal bailiff forbade it, wishing to close once and for all the dowery exception. So the inhabitants secretely decided to give the inn the name « At the drunken goose », as a last homage, apparently disrespectful but discreetly grateful.

Many years later, this very name was of course re-used when the ruined castle was strengthened and moved into by master Finran to shelter his inn… »

.oOo.

The sweating young man emerges from his tale as out of a pond. He has been pretty good. But the eyes of his beloved, sparkling with pride, seem to him sweeter than the applause of the connoisseurs, who have appreciated the new variant about the old lady's moods. Indeed this tale inflates at each narration, with some unexpected ornament.

Flying on the wings of success, the teller of the evening imagines he's now first assistant tailor and dreams about a happy marriage and a workshop of his own…

.oOo.


	3. The riddles of Master Gigolet

**The riddles of master Gigolet**

A few years ago, a slick fellow tried to play games on Messer Finran. Who would have thought that possible? Usually his scars and his imposing stature do not encourage to take him lightly... Here's how.

.oOo.

A fat man, lithe and laughing, sat at the bar and asked for pullets and pies, engulfing them before one could count them. But the bold and cunning fellow was not willing to pay, challenging master Gigolet to have him throw up his meal. The poor waiter nearly swoon at that bleak prospect ...

This petty thief thought he would get away with that dine and ditch but Messer Finran, with his iron fist, seized and bound him over a barrel, from which he could not move all night long. He was given clear water, but that was all. After three days of this, the eat-and-run called for mercy, and accepted Messer Finran's deal.

Every evening he was opposed to the hosts of the great hall in a riddles contest. He was promised that he would be released as soon he would win. But in Thalion, especially at the sign of the Drunken Goose, the antique riddle game is often practiced and everyone hones his tricks. This means our thief was not to be released any time soon!

Yet he was granted a roast chicken every time he lost with panache.

The game had been lasted for two weeks and the thief could not manage to win. One night he tried other arts. So Messer Finran was forced to release him when the infuriated guy pretended singing with his rattle voice, only good for dehorning cattle!

Since that time, when a traveler has been too timid, he is offered a riddle contest, while retaining a smile...

Here are some of the riddles heard in the great hall. Most are pretty easy, but you will find all the answers?

.oOo.

_1_

_Ten companions_

_who never stride_

_the roads together_

_2_

_-« Passenger without luggage._

_Heir without purse._

_His legacy will not bequeath.  
Knows how to do, _

_But may not do so.1. »_

3

_Patient sequence, _

_Winding line unrolled too quickly, _

_I may not be forced to stop, _

_But I stop for each of us. _

_4_

_Two squads of swashbucklers sorted by size, _

_Winner and loser in turn,_

_Vassals of the same headman._

_5_

_Flies without wings,_

_Grows landless,_

_Worries as wisdom decimate,_

_Age governs its color._

_ 6_

_Comes friends closer, _

_Opens onto the unknown, _

_Yards between the yards, _

_Ribbon on the dress in the world._

_7  
Neither empty nor full,  
Of air, it is not.  
Dark or bright according to ease,  
Away from the nest, but cozy by reputation,  
Fragrant volutes sometimes escape._

_8_

_Intermediate link _

_In a chain that multiplies _

_At each step or dwindles _

_Without which would be less _

_As a tree root, proud and vigorous_

_9_

_Steward opposes any,_

_Captain shows the way, _

_Sergeant lies lasciviously, _

_Loving Corporal clothes his golden armor, _

_Petty soldier listens silently._

_10_

_Chrysophile inextinguishable _

_Selfish arrogance _

_Bane of the greedy,  
Curse of his victor. _

_11_

_My many parents are slender than me, _

_I am pettier than my child. _

_I have a gorge but can only sing, _

_I flow but do not drown, _

_I have a bed but never sleep there _

_12_

_More powerful than the dragon,_

_More vulnerable than the newborn, _

_The blind man sees me, _

_The deaf hears me. _

_Who eats me dies. _

_13_

_When you discover me, I disappear. _

_When you share me, I weaken. _

_I win eternity in the death of my jailer_

_14  
Soft and implacable master,  
Whimsical and lascivious slave  
I brighten dark skies  
I darken judgment._

_Blind who never cheats,  
Instigator of major revolts  
And loose dropouts.  
I burst the sleeping heart,  
But calms the wounded mind._

_15_

_It is mine to the exclusion of any others. _

_I head forward to meet it every morning without yet knowing it. _

_It will catch me and impose itself one evening._

.oOo.

Is everything settled? Hast ourst honorable host guessed all these riddles?

If you write to us a review, you will be given the answers you got wrong.

.oOo.

**Notes**

1 Inspired by Sacha Guitry, about literary critics: « They know how we do it, but they cannot do it! »


	4. The damned soul of Samhain - Birth

**Samhain's damned soul – Part 1: Birth**

The looks of the regular customers converge to a beanpole, sat apart, absorbed in melancholic and intimate confidence with his pint. The ageless man scraps his dark mop of hair, raises his tired yellow eyes and gives a disenchanted look at the audience:

-« All right, you asked! »

Rhast supplies the town with peat, collecting the clods in winter, drying and delivering them all year round. But his rough groundbreaking also made him Thalion's gravedigger. He buries the dead, maintains the wells and mends the fence when the town can allow it. Taciturn and observer, he speaks scarcely but to good use. Some pretend he is Messer Finran's former comrade-in-arms – others, that this penitent mobster flew Tharbad for his life.

Obviously, his famished weasel's face, his tall arched silhouette and his detached gait have owed him the brat's bogeyman status and several unflattering surnames. Rhast frightens somehow whoever knows him not. His disenchanted and sharp gaze pierces any secret, giving any soul the unpleasant sensation of being stripped bare. His presence has the power to root out of the mortals heart, the turmoil beneath the reassuring family well-being or the assuaging domestic comfort. When one runs into him, one remembers that dark terrors will one day take us to the grave. He knows the horrors of the under-world. But he seems to fear nothing, and that is weird.

It is rare Sire Finran asks him for a tale…

And just before Samhain, the dead's nights ?

So be it.

.oOo.

A couple of farmers are walking back to their cottage. The young wife, pregnant and nearly at term, braids a crown of flexible branches. The young husband, panting and bending under a huge firewood bundle, can hardly follow her:

-« We shall call him Tordemir, like my father! This is a family tradition, from father to son, since our ancestor, the butler of his majesty Malvegil of Arthedain!

\- Your father was a drunkard, hardly able to remember his own name! His memory could only recall back to his last booze! Maybe, Tordemir the ancestor was appointed to the trash can, if he ever existed!

\- Stop speaking ill of my family! Anyway Tordemir, that's a beautiful name!

\- A bumptious name. That stinks low nobiliary, idle and haughty. I prefere Tuisog!

\- … boaf ! That is not a name, that looks like nothing!

\- It means « Prince » in my ancestors tongue!

\- Isn't that bumptious now? Are you sure it will be a boy, at least?

\- I tolf you a dozen times, I come from the shamans of Prenn Lûth… I can read the omens!

\- Yes of course! And you were tought in the guts of your mother's uneatable roast boars?

\- Torgil, let my mother's soul rest in peace! Do you wish her to roast your feet during your sleep? I know she would fancy that, you Arthedain pig!

\- Oh, stop your silly dunnish non-sense tales! What is that good for, this play-acting, giving birth in the woods, calling for visions, planting trees at night, read the guts, listen to the spirits… Please live within your time!

\- oh yeah, let's talk about your degenerate customs! You probably mean hanging out with your sloth buddies and get drunk at the Goose! That's for sure, visions, you do not need to call them in the open, they naturally come in the vapors of boozer! Let me tell you this cushy Arthedain bourgeois's life of yours is definitely over! You're going to get to work! Soon you will be a father!»

.oOo.

In the midst of the pinkish swellings, the child appears, contained in congested and tight muscles. His hand is hanging out of the vulva. The small hail hand, which cyanotic fingers open convulsively, is grasping for help in this world. For a dozen hours, the stomach's efforts strive to drive this cumbersome life, tearing screams of pain from the body, twisted across the poverty linens. In this profile decomposed with suffering, the appalled father recognizes not the slender girl with impish traits and bewitching charm, who ran in the hills, a spray of heather in her arms.

Old Sarff, the village midwife, rolls terrified eyes. Curse! The Lord of the Dead's black hand has cast anathema to the household. She's a somehow a witch and this bode gives her cold sweats.

Suddenly a croaking slaps in their back, nearly stopping the old woman's heart. A big crow, dark as soot, watches them with its cold and evil eye, perched on the table. A viscous carrion flap hangs at its gray beak. Where does this one come from?

\- "Get rid of it, quick!", whispers the old Sarff.

Trembling with mistrust, Torgil grabs a broom and opens the door. The bird leaps on the edge of the bed with a hoarse cry of contentment, like a host pressing before mealtime. The angry husband strucks a blow that gets lost but forces the bird to give up its dark intentions.

\- "Do not kill him, whatever! ", yelps the witch.

The crow must retreat. Passed the door, the bird looses a cry of protest and hate while taking off. As soon Torgil closes the door, elements seem to awaken around the cottage. A mournful roar rises from the depths of the earth, invading the air and insinuating by all the slits.

The mother, entering new contractions, jogs to the vindictive rhythm of the wind's assaults on the door. The midwife repels the small arm, returned it to its original egg. A din of evil crows is unleashed on the stubble.

-"Guard the door!", curtly orders the witch to the husband.

Then she sings the call of spring, trying to cover the malice of the Lord of the Dead by her quavering voice.

With lard, the midwife coats her fingers, she slowly introduces as a wedge. Penetrating slowly with a rotating motion of the wrist, she expels mucus oozing with disgusting sucking sounds. Torgil, livid, empties his bile in a bucket. With an effort grin, the witch sinks again, adjusting the posture of the child, while the other hand rests on the belly and guides the repositioning.

A silence settles as a satisfied smile passes over the midwife's face, overcome with fatigue. But a low growl and beast snorts are heard behind the door of the cottage. The fears of the night come forward when the body is exhausted and the hearts flex. A wild beast is prowling around the cottage, sniffing the hesitant beginnings of life, tracking the flickering steps of the weakened prey.

Then the whole body of the mother suddenly shakes; it seems she is split with a heavy cleaver, like she saw the oxen cut at the castle. On her bed of misery, her revolt breaks out so violently at the rhythm of thunder, that she twists with an irresistible stiffening of the neck and the child slips from the hands of the midwife. Blodwen violently relaxes her legs with the fixed idea of getting rid of that witch who tortures her by quartering from the kidneys to the belly. The rage of Samhain slips into her while the growling animal scratches at the oaken door and pushes with its broad shoulders. Blodwen insults her torturer and tears her face with her nails.

Torgil rushes to calm his wife.

\- "Gard the door, imperiously orders the witch, We must hold on yet!".

Torgil buttresses on the door where beats a bad wind. The spent midwife finally releases her hand, gently leads the little feet while ending the version motion. The witch sighs, forehead in sweat, breathless, as after a violent effort. The thundering warns that her enemy has not given up. The wind and rain are twice as strong, blasting on the groaning hovel. Torgil pushes the table against the door and resists the blows of the Night.

There are few appalling moments, the unfortunate mother screams even louder, as the head comes out and pushes the flesh, that round in a wide livid ring. The child falls into a final effort, under a rain of blood and dirty waters.

At the same moment, the beast, drunk with the smell of blood and the pulsating life, forces the door and tumbles its defender. When its rumor invests the cottage in a victorious roar, the fire dozes, plunging the modest interior in a darkness of over- world.

Horrified, the old witch shrivels on the tiny, still and sticky being, blowing pathetically in his little lungs, again and again.

But during the night of Samhain, mortals may not summon life with impunity. The Lord of the Night comes forward to take his due. A large shadow spreads its powerful scrolls as inhuman muscle that darkens the entrance of the poor cottage.

Torgil sees fangs in favor of a flash and brandishes his fork. A low rumble throws him to the ground, panting and bathed in his blood. An impenetrable cloud looks at his victim, savoring the unique aroma of flesh palpitating with terror.

But the annihilated witch gives her breath to the child till she has none, expiring life's hope and inspiring only death's blandness. She blows again and again, as the Lord of the Night greedily contemplates her pitiful attempts to postpone the inevitable.

Then the rooster crows. The rooster announces the return of day, of men and their domination. The black cloud of malice thrills with a breath of doubt, and advances to finish this.

But old Sarff finally feels a slight shudder of the tiny mouth under hers. Suddenly the child launches his first cry. As if struck by lightning, the shadow creature rolls on itself, flowing back toward the door.

Then the rising sun throws at the window, the red shadow of the great barrow, which summons fear back in its den. The darkness vanishes, leaving its prey, yet overcome, in a sinister roar announcing frustration and thirst for revenge.

.oOo.

Old Sarff comes home, by the grove in the evening. Last night, she defeated the Lord of the Night. She subtracted from Him a new-born prey, that the carelessness of his parents had not protected with a saving elm. She usually avoids that night, using subterfuge to advance or delay the labour. But this time, He almost overcome her...

Exhausted, the midwife slowly walks towards her house. The works of the last twenty four hours have ripped her of any other wish than her poor mattress. In addition to that horrible night of Samhain, spent in watching and fighting, she has attended two other patients. It is not for people her age... She should perhaps retire, she thinks distractedly. She could join her younger brother, who settled near Bree after the war. She would dedicate to her nephews, finally ceasing to wander...

Twilight feeds her melancholy while the last rays bath the valley with an uncertain glow. At the way's next turn, she will go up the slope to her left and will be home. She speeds up like an old horse near the stable.

While the sunlights greet her with one last blaze, Sarff chills with fatigue, cold, and an indefinable doubt... What has she forgotten?

Searching in her old memory what awakened her anxiety, the midwife hardly recognizes this path that winds through the valley. It's weird, this mist... The path is now lost in a cold mud where she wades while chilling her old feet. A little further, the witch stops, confused. A stale smell of decay and sulfur slowly rises from the marsh. The old lady, distraught and very miserable, tries to position, but thick clouds ghostly veil everything around.

Suddenly, a gurgle sounds behind her, as muffled by the fog. Sarff's breath accelerates. Was it really a foul exhalation of the swamp? A buzz goes to her head while her heart is racing. She has to get out of there! She soars at random, at once pursued by a rumor that swells with low and sinister rumblings.

When the old woman stumbles and falls into the icy mud, the contents of her bag spreads on the floor. Then the witch remembers what she forgot. Blodwen's placenta! The placenta she had kept for ritual burial to neutralize the Lord of the Night's evil! She forgot, miserable!

Alors la chape d'ombre et de nuit la submerge. Elle ne peut même proférer une incantation, alors que la chasse déferle sur elle, broyant son cœur d'une douleur fulgurante et fouillant ses viscères avec acharnement.

The next day a cowherd finds, in the middle of his field, the corpse of old Sarff, who seems to have succumbed to a heart attack. Stray dogs, probably attracted by a placenta that she had kept, had horribly mutilated her body.

.oOo.

With his cuffs, Rhast wipes his lips full of a foam. Placing his empty mug, the gravedigger with a weasel's profile turns his jaded look, to a silent audience who fathoms him with amazement.

\- "So what? Must not go out on a foggy night with a fainting heart!", he says with a sly grin.

The room does not appreciate his humor any more than his tale. Rhast is not gifted to lighten the mood.

\- "It was inevitable someone should give this stolen life back..." he says with a shrug.

This drought funeral arithmetic deeply hampers the assistance. Would Rhast deny men the right to fight the long defeat? Would the time of their death be a foregone conclusion? Peasants and town dwellers revolt at the idea. Yet many feel powerless and fatalistic, especially on this night of Samhain. Faces, outraged and silent, scream their unanimous need to exorcise this odious insinuation.

\- "Well, all right, let's finish this! Here's more! But then, do not you come and complain if the moral is not for you either..."

.oOo.

NOTES


	5. The damned soul of Samhain - Tree

**Samhain's damned soul – Part 2**

\- "Come on, Torgil, It'll be good for you!", loughs Blodwen.

The baby in her arms seems to agree happily with everything mummy says.

\- "But that is icy cold!", retorts the man concerned, shivering entirely nude, with water at his ankles.

\- "Come on! Show some courage to your son!"

The daddy, his courage somehow numbed, cannot feel any more any of his extremities, bluish and shriveled by the cold, and pathetically points out that such a treatment may deprive his son of any possible sister or brother.

\- "In spring, sap strenghthens up all the branches, my man… ", insinuates the roguish girl, while repressing a smile for her spouse's modest dispositions.

Torgil must obey. After several steps in the stream, he dives in the cold water. Then he rushes out of the stream and, dripping and blowing, runs to a young tree he had spent two hours to split along its height. He quickly passes between the two bows under the baby's alarmed looks and his wife's loving eyes.

\- "Look, Tuismir!, she sings. The Goddess gives you a brand new daddy…"

Thus Torgil is reborn in Arda, expelled from the Goddess' symbolic vulva, purified, dripping from the world welling, nude and innocent for his first day.

Putting the baby in a basket of wicker and elm, Blodwen energetically dries her husband with a tartan of her clan. Then she gives a tender kiss on the blue lips:

-"Get dressed, quick!

\- Am I to do this for every birthday?

\- No, but whenever you behave not as I said!", she says with a playful tone.

\- "Blodwen, don't take advantage at that !", retorts the husband while helping his wife to straighten and bandage the tortured tree.

\- "Torgil, this is important for me, to protect my family as my ancestors did. The world is full of forces we do not understand. And the elders knew how to protect from them. I only ask you to find a pretty elm tree! We must re-plant it today, one year after his birth, and only you can do this! That will be your son's protecting tree, consecrated the day he came here. Everybody has one, even you! I planted an ash tree for you, the day we married.

\- I never asked you to plant a tree for me! I can defend myself! Why perpetuate rituals you do not understand?"

Harshly stung, the young dunlending woman answers:

\- "Who says I do not understand them?"

She adds sneakily with a vengeful smile:

\- "See how traditions are good! You are cold? You are entrusted to run through the forest and find a pretty little elm tree to protect your son! See you! It is time I feed him up!

\- Can't you feed him here?

\- Are you insane? Breast-feeding here? You want me to catch a pneumonia?"

.oOo.

Ruminating on his resentment, Torgil swiftly strides the way, his hoe on his shoulder:

\- "Can you believe that?"

The young father furiously shoots at a small stone that rolls before him on the way.

\- "She's never satisfied! Summoning the spirits! Bathing in winter! And these trees, everywhere trees!"

But his irritation is not enough to warm him up:

\- "Damn! I am freezed..."

His step slows down. Torgil is thinking, he cannot perform two tasks at a time…

\- "By the way, how can I recognize a young elm in winter?…"

The steps accelerate somehow:

-"I shall ask Eothor, he will know for sure!"

The stride becomes almost merry:

-"Furthermore, he will take me to the forest with his cart, and back to my cots!"

Torgil's steps get back to a virile and determined pace:

\- "After all, Arthadan tradition for a birthday, is to offer a round!"

His pace still gains some firmness as he gets away with the last bits of his guilt:

\- "Oh bother! Anyway I must warm up!"

.oOo.

_-" … Let's have a sip, death let's defy,_

_To the health of our Cardolan!_

_Since neighbour Araphor the vile,_

_Has brought forth his flag at a fault!_

_His despicable knights cause pain,_

_Coveting grassy hills and fields._

_Haro you King of Arthedain,_

_Against thour arms let's raise our shields!"1_

The pints rattle under the cheers ending the famous refrain. Young people drink greedily to the health of their beloved kingdom, under the jaded eyes of the Drunken Goose's tenant. Where beer flows freely, courage seems endless...

Yet a veteran, sat in a corner, is observing the youth with a bitter and disillusioned air, sipping his ale sparingly. He led a squad of Cardolan during skirmishes along the Menatar Romen. He made a difference at the siege of Amon Sûl. He was one of the few to survive the hordes of orcs and trolls of Angmar, which annihilated the Cardolan army on the Barrow Downs. His amputated leg reminds him of that every day.

So he leaves their youthful enthusiasm to the drunken brawlers! They will discover soon enough that petty politics of men, their futile hopes and selfish interests are only scattered brooks against the tides of their time.

\- "By Bema2, these accursed Arthedain keep on plundering the country! I have seen another convoy this morning!

\- You're exaggerating, Eothor! They maintain order since our troops have been scattered. Without them, there would be chaos, like in Tharbad, where thousands of refugees are languishing. Their convoys are bringing food and medicines.

\- But you're soft! You fraternize as if Angmar's victory was not their fault! Well hidden in their fortress of Amon Sûl, they have let us torn apart without moving their princely bottoms to rescue our valiant companies!

\- You speak as if you had been there!

\- I was fifteen, I could have gone along with my father and the company of mercenaries! My mother kept me from going! But now she won't hold me! We must prevent them from bringing north anything valuable!

\- Yeah, somebody tried to oppose it, you know how he ended up! Luinril was hanged ten days ago, for attempting to take back Hir Eredoriath3's old grimoires going up noth to Bree.

\- Let's drink to the memory of Luinril, our hero! He at least has opposed the traitors who attempt to annex the country!"

While beer streams rush in the exalted and thirsty throats, the door of the inn opens in a crash. A strong sergeant of the Arthedain royal army enters the common room, followed by his patrol:

\- "Hey, you should calm down! Fellows inciting to riot? Come on, you scatter!"

The warlike tendencies of the small group are quickly dulled. Young people scatter themselves, grumbling against the occupier.

\- "Hey, you, the leader! You certainly don't think to get away with that?"

Eothor, his chubby face scoring a strong determination, grabs a stool behind a table, ready to defend his life dearly, as his father in the Battle of the barrows. The patrol will make short work of this tall young man, awkward and somehow pudgy...

Torgil interposes with a conciliatory tone:

\- "Come on, my lords! I am a recent father who just celebrates the first birthday of my eldest! Would you mind forgetting this misunderstanding on this festive day?"

The sergeant doesn't like hearing his king insulted, but he is a decent fellow. He snatches the opportunity to show the Arthedain magnanimity. Eothor, carrying no weapons on him, is left free with a warning he does not care.

.oOo.

The two friends go apart in an alcove, carrying the pitchers abandoned by their companions.

\- "Thank God you came, Torgil! Otherwise it would have been a bloodbath..."

His friend does not mention the bluster:

\- "I am angry too... You won't guess what she invented?"

Eothor slips a worried look towards Torgil. He is again going to talk to him about «Her». He is still going to complain about this girl, so divine that she is haunting his thoughts all day long. Eothor has always been madly in love with Blodwen, which in turn has always seen him as a protective older brother, a big clunky guy, the eternal best friend and stooge of the beautiful Torgil. The romantic giant, slightly paunchy, hides the immense injury of his life under the cheeky outside a voluble rhetoric, vindictive peacockeries that have now found their cause - the defense of Cardolan against its raptor neighbor Arthedain. But for the time, Eothor feels a strange uneasiness. He loves Torgil as a brother, and never yet has jealousy shown him its abject grin.

Yet tonight, Torgil's selfish attitude irritates him. Perhaps he even grudges him for saving him minutes ago. The young father unpacks his problems on the table as one empties a bottomless trash. Really, he does not deserve Blodwen, says the big lovesick for himself.

After the fourth round of drinks, in the inn that the patrol almost emptied, Torgil is still rehashing his domestic conflicts. But his friend has only one idea in mind: to teach a lesson to this little pretentious, unaware of his own luck...

\- "You know what, interrupts Eothor exceeded, we'll go get your little tree!

\- You'd do that?

\- Of course! Aren't we friends?"

Here they are, Eothor at the reins, among potatoes sitting Torgil, who is soon snoring like a drunkard. Outraged, Eothor stops as soon as possible and digs the first young plant that looks a little bit like an elm.

\- "That will do the trick for this selfish!", he mutters, depositing the plant in the bosom of the sleepy drunk.

.oOo.

Torgil is walking with a heavy step, sobering slowly into the misty evening air. Something in the tone of Eothor made him feel that his friend had had enough to do the dirty work for him. So he wanted to make the last miles by himself, the sapling under his arm, pacing the road in the middle of the moors with his hesitating drunkard step. Before him, hung on his hoe on his shoulder, oscillates the small lantern Eothor lent him.

Coming slowly to his senses, the young father mutters the obvious self-reproaches. True enough, he could have behaved somehow... Also true he should not have been ranting as he did...

Night falls completely, isolating the solitary walker in his bitter thoughts. For sure, he should not have gone to the inn. He should have directly fetched an elm.

Torgil feels increasingly guilty as he approaches his cottage, where Blodwen is expecting, he imagines with a wry smile. In those moments, Torgil hates to veil with domestic benevolence, what he -deep inside- considers as a weakness before his wife. He loves her, but he cannot stand her authority.

Suddenly a fork comes out of the fog, at the foot of a gallows. This is where Luinril's corpse is rotting in its suspended steel cage. A stench recalls that the corpse of the "Cardolan hero" is hung for only a few days. Torgil shivers despite himself.

-"If I had your courage, he exclaims exalted, I would put down these ridiculous beliefs under my roof! Instead I let myself pilloried by my wife, and I had to entertain the whole Goose about that! Cursed be wedding!"

A sad rusty creak from the suspended cage replies tersely. Torgil, surprised, launches derisively as to exorcise his own amazement:

\- "Well, Luinril, come dance for my son's party! You should explain my wife to leave these spirits alone! Then we may get rid of these silly antics."

Torgil is relieved he made his complaints loud, although his eloquence is only manifested in the absence of his wife. He resumes his way in the fog with his meandering approach, vowing that never again would he bend to such absurd demands.

But it is unwise to invoke the dead during Samhain night. In the darkness without a breath of wind, the cage swings a sprightly pace. The head of the corpse, which has lost one eye, looks over the gaunt shoulder with a disturbing grin of satisfaction.

.oOo.

Early in the morning, Blodwen muses at the window. The fresh air tingles her nostrils but peddles humus and pine wood fragrances in pristine skies. The day is beautiful!

Joyfully, the young woman loads a barrow with appetizing food, she lengthily and lovingly prepared, some tools and the elm plant that her beloved husband finally brought yesterday. Then she wakes her little family up, dresses them warmly and briskly leads them behind the house, up to Torgil's tree, she planted above their welling.

Blodwen stands a Picnic table under the young slender ash, merrily humming a hills' old tune, while Torgil plays with their son, perched on his belly.

-"And what is this for?", asks the husband by pointing a wooden plate that usually serves to cram the remains to be swung to the pig.

\- «Why, Torgil, for feast days, we lay the table for the poor, it's tradition! «

\- «Not again, thinks the husband, still another traditional day! How painful customary acrobatics again must I attend to now to please the spirits?

The answer comes at once...

\- "There, everything is ready! But first, a few formalities...", happily launches Blodwen with a nod to her son's address.

Torgil ducks his head, while small Tuismir claps his hands excitedly.

The family plants the sappling near the ash, just close enough to enjoy the protective force of the young slender tree, but far enough to develop its own personality without taking umbrage at its umbrella.

Tuismir is allowed to plant some crumpled apples at the foot of each tree. Then Blodwen puts a snack by the welling, that chuckles its eternal indifferent air between mosses.

.oOo.

Retracing her steps towards his two men, Blodwen leaps and pales, stopping short. Torgil follows the gaze of his wife and lacks fainting while Tuismir starts crying, awkwardly trying to reach his mother's skirts. A silhouette wrapped in a dark shroud is installed before the plate of the poor, apparently waiting for the meal to start.

\- "Who are you?, Torgil launches with an unsteady voice while grabbing a spade. What do you want? »

The dark cap slowly turns to Torgil. An unbearable stench rises and grasps at the throat of the living, as if pestilential myriads larvae were blooming together to spread the foul moods of a dead unable to leave this world. Then rolls a sepulchral voice, the tone of which seems yet to seek for conciliation:

\- "I was invited to the party. I come to received my share."

Torgil blanches, throws him a cheese and exclaims, waving his spade:

\- "Luinril, take this and let us alone!"

The shape slowly gets up. The smells of corrupted flesh suggest what the dark coat still veils from view.

\- "The share I owe by right is this life, stolen in the gap between the kingdoms of men and shadows.", says the voice with a tone without appeal, raising a raw index, with disgusting putrid reflections, which points to small Tuismir.

\- "It's too late!, roars the young mother while coming in front of her son, her heart swelling with a lioness rage and strapped with a brazen insurance. The vows to the Goddess are pronounced and the child has a place in the kingdom of men!

\- These vows were spoken in the wind of Samhain and the Goddess knew nothing of them. The protective tree that you planted is not fit for your son!"

Blodwen's confidence collapses suddenly. She turns her distracted and begging gaze to Torgil, who looks down not to cross it. She is not a shaman of clan Prenn Lûth, but she knows that nothing will prevent the lord of the night to take his due. Unless a sacrifice beyond human life... powered by a black resentment, Blodwen grabs Torgil's ax and with a powerful blow of despair, slices the young ash.

The dark shape whistles like a wounded snake and screams with rage:

-"You choose to keep your son! But what would I do with this bum unbeliever?", bawls the mantle considering appalled Torgil, already won by a waxy, grayish complexion.

\- "He promises to give you rest!", roars the woman in tears, trembling like a leaf ready to fly in the wind of Samhain.

.oOo.

Covered with icy sweats, Torgil is fencing against the oaken door. Finally the galgal's lock gives a deafening creak. Grabbing his lantern, the young man steps back precipitously, giving way to the shape darker than night, that enters the dome of the dead.

His wife warned him: "This is your last chance! You do what I promised in your name! Or we shall be separated forever!"

For this time he complies point by point. Illuminating a piece of parchment with his lantern, he tries to read the ritual begging the Lord of the Night to receive this distressed soul. He understands nothing of what he is reading, but slowly the doors are closing.

Suddenly a cry rings out:

\- "In the Name of the King, who goes there?"

When the shadow passes over him in a raspy breath of frustration, Torgil falls backwards, dropping his lantern off suddenly. Overwhelmed by horror, he hears the groans of the slain soldiers quench one by one under greedy blows.

In the morning, the sergeant arrests him before the barrow. The patrol does not know what happened exactly, but three Arthedain soldiers were killed that night with Torgil's spade, who was found besides the dead.

.oOo.

Public order and justice are issues the royal legate of Arthedain does not take lightly, by these troubled times. Furthermore alarming news have spread about the barrows along the greenway, and led the old Hir of En Eredoriath to proclaim prudent measures and give full authority to the armies of Arthedain in his barony.

The suspect is accused of stealing the remains of Luinril and killing soldiers of Arthedain who were arresting him when he was trying to give the dead a burial. There is therefore no mercy to expect for the charges relate to both opposition to martial law and breaking in the dead's shrines.

Indeed, Torgil is sentenced to death.

Eothor attempts to flex the legate. In vain.

The grieving wife comes and begs for his life on her knees. For special measure of humanity, Torgil is strangled in his cell.

Then his body is shut and hoisted into the odious cage hanging at the gallows. Therefore he must not endure a slow death in front of his wife, but his remains will remind everyone that the justice of men does not accommodate with dead rumors.

.oOo.

A vigorous ash has very quickly grown under the body of the unfortunate, invading his cage in less than a year as if a late vow to protect its occupant had meant to retain him and surround him with tenderness. The neighborhood has been terrified.

It is said that at nights of red moon, a ghost calls for burial to all passersby.

.oOo.

Last night, the skeleton of Torgil was stolen. It is not known who did it.

Alerted, Blodwen came to mourn at the foot of the ash under the gallows, his two years old boy in her arms. Eothor, bearing his guilt around for months, took them in his cart.

On their way back, Eothor offers an elm sapling to Blodwen, who raises towards him, eyes suffused with tears, but overflowing with gratitude.

Tomorrow is Samhain and Tuismir's birthday.

.oOo.

Rhast spreads his arms in a gesture of helplessness:

\- "Woa, whoa, whoa, I have nothing to do with this! You asked for the end! Reportedly, it's about that time that the barrows' inhabitants began to stir. But you should not believe everything you hear... Anyway you know this tree: the lonely ash, six miles north of Thalion on the greenway, just before the first barrow. When you pass nearby, nothing weird happens... most of the time..."

If you think about it, indeed a solitary ash, at a place called the Hangman's fork, stands huge and twisted, and metal bars are embedded in its main branch at a pole's height... But that does not prove anything...

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 In 1409, the kingdom of Angmar launched a heavy blow on Arthedain and Cardolan, who united to resist. Cardolan'army was destroyed at the battle of Tyrn Gorthad, while Arthedain hardly resisted the assault at Fornost Erain and Weathertop. Cardolan's King was killed with his sons, and the kingdom lived in unrest, as Arthedain tries to re-unite the old Arnor.

2 Name that the woodmen, the Beornings and the Eothraim (and thus later the Rohirrim) gave to the Vala Oromë. This name comes from the anglo-saxon _béme_ « trumpet ». Oromë blew his hunting horn while chasing Morgoth's beasts.[

3 The Hirdor of En eredoriath is a baronny encompassing Tyrn Gorthad and most of the South Downs.


	6. The hammer and the star

**The hammer and the star**

_This short novel was posted in response of a challenge, which theme was « The doors of Moria »._

.oOo.

Tonight our story is told by a young lonely dwarf, whose great conqueror nose is often tinged with deep carmine. The divine bottle, auxiliary or substitute for many muses, often provides him company. Our dwarf peddles small luxury goods, on the green way, to rivermen or the inhabitants of the Blue Mountains. Somehow poseur and vain, this bearded mountebank often takes liberties with reality -the value, quality, origin and composition of his goods are quite approximate. To put it bluntly, his family ended up throwing out this failure-merchant, who leads a life of a dilettante poet.

So his finances force him to dine at a discount for now. Furthermore he appreciates the warm company and the kind attention of the great hall of the Drunken Goose. When a busty weaver asks why dwarves and elves are still at war, he exclaims, and at once dusts off a tale by peppering some bold approximations.

.oOo.

_Around SA 1200, a powerfull Maïa1, who was called Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, arrives in Eregion. Meanwhile Celebrimbor, famous silversmith and Fëanor's last kin, welcomes him in his brotherhood, Galadriel leaves the land._

_Eregion, Gwaith-i-Mírdain_ 2_, SA 1584_

The crucible wild blaze splatters the porphyry wall, projecting there monstrous shadows of two giants striking back. The elf and dwarf are picking on a tiny flicker, precipitating their steel hammer with the regularity of a clock and the power of a ram. The stubborn glow throbs and glazes with a cheerful tinkle under each powerful blow. Purple fumaroles embrace the artisans' wrists, distilling acrid blood and stormy fragrances. As a living, molten metal is a whimsical and challenging servant. But the two masters slaughter their enchanted maces with consummate skill and perfect accordance. Pinchers twirl, anvil sings in two voices a bewitching air. The alternate hammering shapes the noble material, sublimating the smith's delicate science by the transcending intention of the jeweler.

And suddenly a double ring hatches, like two flowers emerge from the same original bud, the refined Noldorin lines running on the subtle Naugrim alloy.

The two friends together deal the separating blow and raise their works to the light, exchanging a satisfied and conniving smile in the sweltering heat of the forges. Then with the same gesture they dive back to work, chiseling and crimping the twin rings, they exchange and round off slowly. Power words chanted in Khuzdul meet echoing the elven incantatory litanies until morning.

Finally dwarf and elf walk out of the forges, staggering with fatigue but thankfully enjoying the thrill of this fertile communion.

Celebrimbor, dazzled by this disturbing merging experience, begins to understand that the sharing lord Annatar offered him once, was not as altruistic as he had thought at the time. How misled he had been... A long time ago he had earnestly sought the alliance of Lady Galadriel, but she had rejected him from her thoughts, refusing to share their creative excitement. But now Celebrimbor had met Narvi...

.oOo.

_Throne room of Khâzad-Dûm, SA 1628_

From his throne, the great dwarf scans splendor spread at his feet and necks prostrate before him. His lofty forehead radiates a compelling determination. His brazen arm holds an irresistible quiet strength. His dresses trickle of gold and silver, these dwarven toys. Thousand jewels crown his august white hair with an unreal flickering.

Durin the third is enthroned in majesty in the ceremonial hall of Dwarrowdelf. His glance is order.

His fist shines with the lights of a golden ring, set with an emerald. Since he claimed this gift from Celebrimbor as a heirloom, the King under the Mountain does not experience weakness any more. When he withdraws in himself, visions form and his penetrating wisdom reveals the ways of power.

-" Fràar ! Come to me ! "

The commander of the mines comes forward and bows respectfully.

\- "For many moons Mahal sends me a dream. Have galleries set down northward, from the ninth depth. We shall find a vein that the world would envy us. Even more than today, our kingdom will ensure its dominance among the seven clans and hegemony over its neighbors. "3

While Fràar, overwhelmed by the prescience of his king, musters his captains to reach the depths, the King under the Mountain continues his inspiration:

\- " Narvi! Come here! "

The first ambassador does not appear in the large hall any more, without a shudder of apprehension. The king's understanding has become subtle and deep, but his vision has hardened and Narvi fears his decisions.

\- " The fate of our people is imminent - wealth, power and fame torn from our mines with the sweat of our brows. I order that should be built impassable doors that keep the mountain from the greed of our enemies. No one may pass them without the blessing of the King under the Mountain. Go ! "

.oOo.

_Western door of Khâzad-Dûm, SA 1629_

After months of grueling work, the western gates are erected. Narvi is about to complete his work by solemnly dedicating them to the authority of the King under the Mountain.

\- "May this act bear no ill omen! ", he sighs deeply, thinking that never before the entrance had been closed.

But suddenly his heart leaps for joy. Light footsteps climb the stairs of the stream behind him. His dwarf soul recognizes a friend even before Narvi can identify the cheerful and shrill voice that hail him:

-" Hey, Master Narvi! Why do you seal your stone house? "

The thankful dwarf turns to the newcomer:

\- "Celebrimbor! Be twice welcome, in this moment of doubt! I have built dwarven doors... but may not seal them. My heart warns me. Yet the will of the King under the Mountain must be obeyed…"

The tall elf instinctively grasps his friend's reluctance. He thinks for a while and smiles at the dwarf, with a star in the background of his look:

\- " Of course! But your king has left you free, about how to carry out his order..."

Then the two friends work hard, carving, engraving, inlaying tiny moonstone crystals. For a whole day and part of the night, the two soul mates support and inspire each other to dedicate the union of two people. When the moon rises, Celebrimbor and Narvi join their voices and twin rings to pronounce the sacramental vow. The inscription is illuminated briefly before vanishing, while the doors majestically open:

« Ennyn Durin Aran Moria Pedo mellon a minno. Im Narvi Hain echant Celebrimboro o Eregion teithant i thiw hin. 4»

Ravished, the two companions lengthily contemplate each other's work. It seems to them, their friendship will bloom as long as blaze on these doors, the hammer of Dùrin and the Star of Fëanor.

.oOo.

_Throne room of Khâzad-Dûm, SA 1629, one week later:_

\- "Never did any descendant of Durin has so brazenly dared to disobey the King under the Mountain!"

Narvi, kneeling and mortified, beholds the remains of his beautiful black beard, scattered on the floor around him. He has not even had the opportunity to justify. The fury of the King under the mountain falls on him with a blind intransigence.

The ruler of Dwarrowdelf feels betrayed by his own blood. The door, which was to ensure the safety of his people, was tainted by a foreign hand! The password has been revealed! Dùrin the third fulminates:

\- "You shall no longer leave the mountain! Since this door cannot be safe, I'll give it a perpetual keeper! I make you hereditary sentinel of the western door. May your sons, if you ever beget, expiate their father's fault!"

The king is about to dismiss Narvi. Then, suspiciously contemplating his ring for a while, he changes his mind and says:

\- "And I strictly forbid foreigners to enter Khâzad-Dûm! The head of anyone who disobeys this order, will be severed, along with his accomplices, be they of Dùrin's blood!"

.oOo.

_Western door of Khâzad-Dûm, SA 1697_

The warg tears the head of the elf warrior who was fleeing before him. Eager for warm, clear blood, he devours the viscera, then stops when seeing a girl who reaches the top of the stairs. The terrorized slender elf is frantically hitting her little fists on the closed stone door when the warg interrupts her screams by crushing her chest in a sickening crack. The monster shivers with delight, swallowing the tasty flesh, subtly veined with terror...

As far as the eyes can see, holly bushes burn and dark hordes ride by. Elven refugees flock, harassed by orcs mounted on dire wolves. Fugitives fall exhausted, soon slain by an orc or shredded by a warg. A group of women and children, protected by some elves in arms, is slowly progressing on the paved road. Celebrimbor was able to gather the best surviving swordsmen after the sack of Ost-in-Edhil. Helped by Elrond and Glorfindel, he is leading the little band, to find refuge with his friend Narvi, to the western gate of Dwarrowdelf.

Finally the harassed troops join the portal. Sated, the coward animal that was feasting at the entrance moves away carefully.

Celebrimbor stands in front of the doors and appeals to friendship. In vain. Behind locked doors, a dwarf with a short black beard is crying his impotence, hampered by his comrades.

The Fëanorian hoarses. The doors remain sealed, under the horrified eyes of the elves. Hope is dying in their heart. Out of himself and disbeliving Celebrimbor cannot reject his friendship vows, nor call a curse on the treacherous line of Dùrin.

Then the sky darkens even more, as if all the storms of the Misty Mountains assembled for the kill. Evil creatures themselves, fearing what approaches, disperse whining.

Annatar, Lord of gifts, hurls raging to the door. It is no time any more for him to conceal his malice in a glorious coaxing presence or a subtle promising word. His ferocious greed and thirst for domination over all life, alter his unreal beauty and clear the battlefield. Driven by an unquenchable frustration, he chases the just who tore the Elven rings from his control.

More than by his implacable hatred for this vile renegade Maia, Celebrimbor feels overwhelmed by an irrepressible disgust, this supreme nausea from which frees only death. Recognizing the noxious rumor that announces Morgoth Bauglir's5 henchman, he sends the heroes back. Alone, he will face while flee the remnants of Eregion folk.

Struck by the glazed look of the Fëanorian, Elrond and Glorfindel obey and surrender him to his fate. Bringing together the survivors and leading them to the north, they pretend to aim for the Redhorn Pass and confuse the tracking.

In front of the closed door, desperate revolt confronts insatiable lust.

This revolt is fair, the right unquestionable, the resistance fierce. However perfidious hatred has long veiled its violence with ruse, creeping at the heart of his enemies to know, divide and conquer them. The dark design of domination will break the resistance with a relentless compulsion, for he knows everything of his opponent. Celebrimbor has but one secret to reveal, that Annatar is to extricate from him with palpitating shreds of his disjointed body.

The Lord of Gifts advances. He is to give death.

.oOo.

The Fëanorian is cornered and bloodless. The devious Maia watches his last blow to snatch sword, gauntlet and hand. Then the slow torture extirpate out of his prey, the last secret of Celebrimbor. Annatar will know where are Vilya, Nenya and Narya. And his reign will be complete - inevitable and final.

Exhausted but undaunted, Celebrimbor gathers all his energy for a final assault. Annatar already has him in his power, and smiles at his sacrificial victim with a winning and sneer rictus.

But then comes out of the wall a short shape in shining chainmail. The Maia has only time to see a dwarven mask grinning a curse. Celebrimbor's galvorn6 sword and Narvi's war hammer fall down together in a simultaneous flash, on Annatar who switches on with a cry of terror.

.oOo.

The gates of Moria have closed. An explosion has dug a deep crater in front of the threshold7. The surprised Maia had to draw on the very essence of his flesh to survive this onslaught, led by hatred tenfolded with love. As a thick smoke is clearing, Lord Annatar painfully rises among the corpses. His jagged face will never hoist again, the deceitful smile of his insolent beauty.

Supreme victory has just escaped him. His curse falls on the sealed doors, this time in vain. But the line of Dùrin will not be forgotten.

The remains of Celebrimbor and Narvi are impaled on tall irons spears, carried as banners by a trolls guard.

United in death, the dwarf and the elf keep their secret, long after will be erased on the doors, the hammer of Dùrin and the Star of Fëanor.

.oOo.

The generous weaver has come to sit down beside the voluble dwarf. Success confers a certain charm... As the hall loudly congratulates the Naugrim for his history, she leans on his shoulder and languidly whispers in his ear:

\- " I have guessed what was written on the door : Speak, Lover, and come in !"

The understanding of the young woman surprises the dwarf, who stares at her with interest for the first time of the evening. So at least someone could follow him... But she added with a glance:

\- "I know that, since it is also written on my door!"

.oOo.

**Notes**

1 Maïa, pl Maïar : prime being akin to the Valar, whom they are sometimes the followers. Olorin, Iarwain Ben Adar (Tom Bombadil), Melian and Sauron are Maïar.

2 Smith's brotherhood.

3 As a matter of fact, shortly after this grand revelation, Fràar discovered huge veins of mithril. This discover insured wealth and fame for the kingdom of Khazad-Dûm. But it also led to its fall, in the third age, when the veins, dug ever deeper and deeper, liberated an invincible foe, the Balrog.

4 The doors of Dùrin, king of Moria. Speak Friend and come in. I Narvi have made them. Celebrimbor of Eregion has engraved these signs.

5 The Black Ennemy of the world, the binding.

6 « (…) metal as hard as dwarven steel is malleable, but he could make it thin and flexible as silk while impenetrable to arrows and swords. Eöl called it galvorn, since it was jet-black and shining, and he wore it whenever he travelled. » The Silmarillion, J.R.R Tolkien.

7 The attentive reader noticed that an attempt of explanation has skipped here, aboutcthe origin of the lake in front of the door…


	7. The embalmer

**The embalmer**

Sometimes ocean-going vessels berth at Tharbad, after sailing the grey-flood upstream to sell their goods. So it happens master mariners make the journey to Thalion to overcome their usual intermediaries, find products for return and increase their profits.

That is how a captain from Pelargir, tanned by salt spray, ran aground one night at the sign of the drunken goose. He had experienced quite a few trials - at the last crossing, for example, he had repelled two pirate attacks before reaching the estuary. Somehow braggart, jingoistic and frankly bored with everything, the mariner readily reported a Southern legend, as it is whispered in the slave galley of Umbar.

.oOo.

Carried by the ebb, fast schooners sailing towards the open sea, were horning the call for recognition of the corsairs of Umbar1, to salute the impressive galley that was towing its spoils of war to the slave market.

By land breeze, the harbour launched its sea lions towards the waves of Belfalas, to conquer gondorian merchant ships. Boats of all sizes docked and unloaded before going refit or boarding new goods.

Myriads seagulls bickered, plunging into the waters reddened with viscera, near the fish stalls.

Loaded with spices and smuggled powders gleaned under the coat, the herbalist Zirzîgur paced the dock to get back to the store, snapping his bewitching smiles with equal success, to the harbor girls and to the matrons of the merchant class. The hunk was known for lavishing his elixirs of youth and some favors to a wealthy female clientele.

The door of the shop closed over the teeming life of the overheated docks and its strong emanations, relegating under the blazing sun, the complaints of the gulls and the hubbub of the fish auction. In the calm and cool darkness of the store, the iridescent pottery, closely aligned on the shelves of precious wood, reassured customers by their discreet luxury and the reliability of their medicinal illuminations. The young man locked the door and threw around the voluptuous look of the upstart.

This sumptuous institution, its reputation, its customers, all this now belonged to him. He was especially concerned to perpetuate the worried loyalty of a very select clientele, eager of the occult services of the pharmacy.

.oOo.

That same morning, he had found his magister, motionless in his satin chair, as austere and dry as a mummy of the An Karagmir2 catacombs. On the mahogany table, the last drops of the old despot's favorite remedy were souring in his silver cup. At his age, a dosing error could be lethal... Unless the decrepit miser has confused the preparations that Zirzîgur had completed for him the day before...

The apprentice embalmer stared at the corpse of his old master with revengeful jubilation. But some worry lines altered his mocking smirk - since this morning, the body seemed already plagued by decomposition.

Zirzîgur would have to excel and embalm his deceased master with all the art he had been taught. Wealthy families of old Númenorean stock, which the old apothecary had provided with his expertise in expensive private consultations, on the floor of the shop, should be fully reassured about the capabilities of the young practitioner.

For the occult Númenorean tradition had survived the Gondorian invasion and the reign of Castamir descendants: throughout their lives, its followers were abusing of the pharmacopoeia expedients and obscure spells, to challenge their decay. With the approach of death, the most perverted even succumbed to the promises of a distant re-birth.

Thus some people had paid dearly, and in advance, fraudulent services of an embalmer well versed in dark knowledge. These rich Númenorean customers had absolutely to recognize in this corpse, pulled back to the grace of his youth, the tranquilizing demonstration that their remains would pass through the ages.

Zirzîgur carried the corpse to the lab and began to work...

.oOo.

_Some years later…_

The attractive young man had succeeded beyond his expectations. In the fullness of his manhood, he had become an accomplished and recognized practitioner, bewitching and sure of his art.

In addition to his knowledge of herbalism and alchemy, his skills had been enriched by the arcanes of his old master, annotated with his expert hand. He had found these ancient scrolls, while forcing the secret drawer of the desk where the embalmer had hidden his will. By the way Zirzîgur had immediately realized it was better not to deepen their origin. About the will, a solvent of his own and a few clever spidery scrawl had done...

Perfecting his beguiling eloquence, he had moreover discovered a keen sense of observation and political instincts. The dashing honor officer Zirzîgur had bought for gold the charge of apparitor of the pharmacy aboard the privateer fleet, key to the prestigious gates of naval aristocracy and Sesame of the wealthy merchant guilds.

After him joining the Seraglio, the admirals wives familiarly called him out with the Gondorian name of Meleithron3. Whimsical and expensive mistresses of merchant princes indulged his services, thanking him with useful alcove secrets and exotic treats. The days of ball, the ladies paraded in his pharmacy and Zirzîgur put a point to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of each of these visits.

The embalmer enjoyed these mature women like so many unique flowers to bloom, treat, water or resize occasionally. To all he promised an ever renewed brilliance of their beauty. To each he lavished exquisite and refined attention, so fine, just and personal, that the patient, intimately understood by the handsome embalmer and reassured by his mirror, returned home reconciled with her own attractiveness.

In incurable cases, Zirzîgur also knew how to sparingly handle the scalpel of his former master, remodeling flabby flesh into velvety curves.

But for the women most eager to stop time, those who had exhausted the striking effects of his slimming broths, his vitalizing ointments or his love potions, Zirzîgur reserved his private performances.

.oOo.

In these delicate circumstances, the elegant embalmer resorted to techniques of greater complexity, which required a gentleman's finesse and a patiently assimilated centuries-old knowledge.

The ritual required the presence of a young comely person, vigorous and healthy. Usually, a harbour girl obligingly attended the ceremony. Sometimes Zirzîgur bought at the free Southron4 counter in the slave market enclave, a healthy and obedient girl, he freed when she had completed her task. Profit did not prevent some kind of panache, on the contrary!

The patient and the assistant were initially the subject of a rigorous and complete toilet, refined body care and sophisticated relaxing massage. Then the embalmer administered subtle drinks to the two women, speaking to them gently until they slide into a dreamless sleep. Then the staff withdrew for the most delicate phase of the ritual.

The next day, the patient awoke alert, invigorated with new energy, animated by sparkling sensations of renewal and vitality. Small sneaky pains, organ laziness or chronic fatigue, feelings of oppression seemed evacuated by new blood. The following days, her tissues firmed sustainably, its excess fat was smoothly drained, her skin found a satin touch, her hair flamed with seductive sheen. The discrete scars on the arms and neck of the patient disappeared quickly, absorbed by a regenerative impulses and the attentive care of the "magician". And it happened that the lady, in the heat of her gratitude, experimented on the spot, her renewed charm and ardor.

As for the assistant, she also indulged care, although less luxurious, but these allowed her many wounds cauterized and her vomiting and dehydration treated. The girl, chosen young, usually found health back after a few weeks of depression and fatigue. Handsomely paid, she could set her own shop out of the slums. Meleithron was buying a luxury good conscience, in the form of patronage!

Zirzigûr stood as the supreme lord of youth among the aristocracy of Umbar, not just women. But his talents and income were not limited to the beauty of the living: a repository of knowledge and his late master of commitments, he dispensed with Mithril price, to the heirs of the black Numenorians, the posthumous care their unholy hopes demanded.

.oOo.

_Several years later…_

The widow of the chief Admiral Borazor has raised her confidant Meleithron to the rank of adjudicator of the drug market for the Grand Corsair Council, shortly after his hundred fifty-three years. Zirzigûr was now in control of rare products, and began to perfect the recipes and practices his former master had discarded. His professional curiosity prompted him to explore the possibilities of these forgotten techniques.

No doubt Zirzigûr was also beginning to worry about the future. Now a mature but still very attractive man, he had gained in authority and presence. The blood of Numenor flew in his veins, which, with the help of some remedies of his own, promised quite a long life. But he felt, for many still tiny signs and a diffuse weariness, he would soon engage in the best of his art to stay fit.

Thus he pushed his experiments. Of course alchemical and necromantic research occasioned here and there some collateral damage. The assistant girls lost their hair, sometimes the sight or the use of some limb. But Zirzîgur, motivated and courageous, surpassed every obstacle, and made a sensational discovery: the vital fluids of a woman in love proved to be the most potent elixir of youth that one could experience. In addition, the profit was tenfold if the recipient patient was the subject of her passion!

Soon he dared not use harbour girls as assistants. He had, more and more often, to supply with research assistants at the slave market. To finance these investments, he sold under the cloak, some organs and cells of the few assistants who did not survive. The progress of knowledge and ultimate success were at this price.

For Zirzîgur reached his goal, and developed a process which would avoid the heavy equipment to transfuse the vital humors to the patient. What an unprecedented advance! In this way, he could indulge himself with a high virtue elixir.

.oOo.

For nearly half a century, Zirzîgur burned the candle at both ends. His professional successes found their reward in an unbelievable lifestyle and unbridled love life, with an almost unchanged appearance.

However, when he reached the age at which some Dunedain begin to experiment some weariness of life, Zirzîgur, for his part, felt only the backlash of his excesses, undergoing thousand hassles of an "old beau" at the edge of decline.

It happened one night of depravity, he made the mistake, for sheer derision and perversion, or maybe to deceive his anxieties, to bewitch and seduce one of his customer, wealthy and influential, but worried, tenacious... and plump.

He came to experience a great reluctance for her, the more painful since he had to spare her. The lady was harassing him with her assiduity, jeopardizing his reputation, pushing him to the limit and exacerbating his fear of tomorrow. One evening that he reluctantly gave his wearisome girlfriend, the attentions she had been forcefully crying for all day, he got a brainwave!

He finished the evening with more vigor than usual, and the lady fell asleep, fulfilled and confident...

.oOo.

A few days later, he finally yielded to the entreaties of the passionaria and organized, in absolute secrecy, a revitalization ritual.

The embalmer and his patient committed to a rigorous toilet, peppering with few saucy interludes, without allowing to satisfy these appetites. The patient was pampered, accepting exquisite sweets and heady liquors with a languid air. A massage administered by the master himself plunged her into a fluffy bliss.

When the plump woman was ready for the ritual, the embalmer settled his clever device around the numb body, skillfully incising her, setting glass cannulas and injecting subtle mixtures.

With a morbid satisfaction and an impatience fueled by a long exasperation, the embalmer bustled around the plump client, so deeply in love. Slowly distilled, the humours of the enamoured woman, so beneficial for the beloved, were dripping in a crystal goblet that the loving woman had offered to her lover. The lady was not a patient any more, but the unconscious victim of the ritual. The vase was slowly filling with clear fuchsia elixir.

All night the embalmer activated, pulling the quintessence from his girlfriend, respecting step-by-step protocol he had perfected. There were but a tiny glitch, but it allowed him to indulge a domineering and vengeful impulse.

The lady casually opened her eyes, returning to the level of consciousness where the events are observed as outside of oneself, from a promontory without affect nor sensation. Zirzîgur winced a cruel smile, where she read all his hatred, his need for revenge and fear of aging, which surpassed her own. When the embalmer gave him an additional sedative, she knew his betrayal, and the innermost of her deceived soul, already soaring, she vowed her torturer to eternal remorse. But the ritual continued inexorably, channeling vital humours of the helpless victim.

The next day, all traces of the ceremony were gone. Single witness to the abject scene, a goblet full of a thick fluid, waited on the office of the embalmer. The exceptional concentration of the elixir gave it a deep dark vermilion, which brilliance reminded Zirzîgur the lewd spark that sometimes lit the eye of its late plump owner.

.oOo.

After a day of fasting, the embalmer bore the youth cup to his lips. Shaken by the extraordinary power of the drink, he had to sit down and drank slowly, letting its principles radiate to the end of his limbs.

Before losing consciousness, Zirzîgur found that the potion had a horrible aftertaste of gall, like a whiff of deadly disillusionment.

When leaving this world, he realized that the vermillion red was rather a color for anger and hatred rather than for love...

A few days later, his young dispenser found the old pervert lying on the ground, his skin like a parchment from d'An Karagmir. She looked at his bald head, his hollow eye sockets and skeletal limbs in his robe woven with gold, with a fine and cruel smirk.

The Alchemist had been caught by the tide of time, that his subtle and powerful ointments mixtures had dammed for so long!

.oOo.

The sea wolf, big voluble man who illustrated his tale with suggestive gestures, cast a superior glance at the common room. Somehow disappointed, he found that his story had not overwhelmed the assistance with horror. Instead, a strange sense of resigned solidarity had crept into the hearts, to the victims certainly, but also, somehow, for the young fallen man.

In the north, too, Morgoth's lies threw in the souls of men, shadows of fear and denial of death. Every day, Thalion's farmers fight through love and friendship, the doubts creeping from the depths of the barrows.

This cozy inn of the drunken goose is one of their refuges against loneliness.

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Umbar, main harbor of the numenoreans in middle earth, at the bottom of a huge natural anchorage, far south of Gondor. In the third age, the perverted black Numenoreans made war in Gondor, who submitted them in TA 933. During the kin strife, the harbor sided with the usurper Castamir. His vanquished rebels then fled to Umbar in TA 1448, to found the oligarchy of corsairs, leading a privatteer's war or leading deadly raids on the coasts of Gondor.

2 Necropole of the black numenorean princes of Umbar anchorage, since the imperial period of Numenor in second age, until the beginning of the third age. The tombs are situated in a desert and dry valley, a dozen miles east of Umbar harbor. Some family from numenorean descent, pay some servants to tend and guard the tombs. A small southron town has developed near the oasis, at the entry of the valley of the dead.

3 Equivalent Sindarin of adunaïc Zirzîgur, taht means "love wizard"!

4 When Gondor captured Umbar, slavery was abolished. Later, when the usurper Castamir's followers took refuge in Umbar, they had to make concessions with their Southron allies. An independent enclave was granted to them near the harbour, a free market zone where slavery was legal.


	8. The hospices of the Red Edge

**The Hospices of the red edge**

Good evening everyone! Tonight master Finran had a strange idea! He told us the story of a fellow innkeeper, then he stopped right in the middle of it! Satisfied with himself, he asked his friend Rhâst to continue, and so on with his neighbour...

As all this was likely to cut short, he imposed a theme: the red edge!

At the end of the evening, the common hall had made a colorful tale, multifaceted, where the most romantic hope of wenches, along with the laborer's cynicism could be recognized.

Here is what it resulted in...

.oOo.

The oak sign swayed creaking under its mast. It bore the effigy of a grim cleaver, whith a sharp edge glistening with fresh blood.

The hospice of the red edge took its name from its founder, Caranlain1, former executioner of Baron of En Eredoriath2. Legend had it that he had left his charge, noting with dispair that his office's customers increasingly tended to come back from their graves to disturb his sleep.

These were troubled times indeed. Doubt crept into the minds, Dunedain kingdoms seemed to erode by the threatening shadow of the Witch-king, and the tombs of the Kings won by dark spells.

So our executioner sold his charge and converted into the worthy profession of ghost hunter, with the blessing of his lord who had some urgent use for it.

Caranlain established his quarters in an abandoned post house that served the greenway. Perched atop a hill on the South Downs, mid-way between Bree and Thalion, an old dilapidated tower - which bore the name of Barad Luindalf - neighbored a main building and stables, all surrounded by a rubble wall.

He strengthened the modest fortifications and dug a well. His large family provided to stewardship with discreet efficiency and parsimonious affability of an ancient line of executioners. Fodder collecting, cultivating a vegetable garden, farming land to sheep herders, all these arrangements were made with cold blood (!) of an industrious family.

By necessity, the establishment rather quickly became a haven in the middle of a hazardous crossing. Travelers rightly feared the stage rallying Bree and Thalion. When fog or night invaded the Barrow Downs, fear spread by the hills bristling with stone teeth. People disappeared in uncertain circumstances and rumors of atrocities were told. Then father Caranlain lit a fire at the top of his tower, beacon of hope for the unwary travelers lost in the void.

The shelter became famous for its vigilant hospitality, even if it was somehow less comfortable than a hostel. Merchants saved from disaster often offered, by generosity and gratitude, large sums that allowed the family to flourish. Popular saying gave them a new name: the "bloody hospices." But this success attracted dark venomous wrath against the sign of the red edge.

Under such a standard, the coming war began with bloody auspices.

.oOo.

For this was a war for good. The shadow was leading a sneak attack, yielding apparently to mustered forces, to regain ground on weakened hearts, insinuating a creeping fear.

The remains of kings waved under their mounds, nightly escaping to the wilderness in search of lost souls and fresh blood. The lies of Morgoth haunt the memory of humans since the dawn of time, with death as an odious dispossession or usurpation of a sacred heritage. The Witch-king, by his evil spells, gave to see the frightening spectacle of great souls suffering the throes of unworthy death and impossible rest.

Men, their dead kings should have inspired, were troubled and disbanded, abandoned by faith. The most desperate were found bloodless and pale, motionless and icy as stone, near the big barrows, if not eviscerated at the bottom of a ravine.

The bloody hospices supported a permanent seat. During day, under the protection of the glorious star, Caranlain and his son roamed the greenway, condemning the barrows doors, affixing the powerful sigils3 forged by their lord. Women closed in the desecrated graves, pronounced calming words and banished the evil spirits that infested the sanctuaries with their lies.

At nightfall, they lit on the greenway a standby fire indicating the path that rose to their stronghold, and stirred up the straggling travelers there. When the kingdom of shadows resumed his rights, cold blowed from the graves to the foot of their walls. When wolves and ospreys cried at night, the guards of the bloody hospices slept with one eye open.

But when silent darkness won every corner of the country by a moonless night, then all watched tirelessly, repelling fear and persistent rumor of rattling bones in the cold air. Women sang a song of forgiveness, which casts out fear and disperses the illusions of the Dark Lord.

It happened that abject creatures attacked the walls, during a night of deep darkness. Then the master of the hospital defended his kin with the edge of his former office, while his cronies waved sulfur torches. The cleaver worked wonderfully, cutting undead flesh and breaking the evil animating the spoils.

.oOo.

The fortress held out, the last bastion of light facing the furious ocean of human fears. The Caranlain family, stood fighting around the inflexible father.

Of course all preferred praise for their unwavering watch than suffering the fleeting looks and shy ways towards the executioner! The family shared the feeling of a promotion.

Only the youngest, bright Firniel, showed an independent and whimsical spirit. Certainly, she helped her mother and her sisters-in-law and showed gentle patience with her nephews, but she spent most of her time dreaming elven tales and foreshore lays.

Her universe, populated by sprites, august kings, tiny fairies, elves as beautiful as the stars, was a counterpoint to the obscure fight of their lives. The girl often escaped, running hills, courting the Zephyr and murmuring the loves of Earendil to valleys sources. The family ended up not worrying about her escapades, especially as Firniel seemed insensitive to the fears and doubts of adults.

But one evening, when the low cloud ceiling masked night light, she did not return to the shelter.

.oOo.

Her brothers and father frantically scoured the black moor, torches in hand, calling for her all night long.

Only in the early morning, did they, exhausted, find her quietly leaning against the upper stone of a large barrow. She gently chanted ballads of old, smiling casually as inhabited by a sweet secret.

The girl was returned to the fold, surrounded, nourished, rubbed with invigorating leaves and inspected at every angle. She suffered these inconveniences with all the good grace one is able of at seventeen springs. Her mother noticed that she had nothing, not even a sniffle.

Then came the ritual question:

\- "But, Firniel, what did you do out all night? What is wrong with you?"

With gentle authority and disarming grace - You people cannot understand, this is a girl's story! - she had all the men ousted out of the room. When her stepsisters had closed the door with ill-concealed excitement, she announced with a candid aplomb, she had found the boy of her dreams.

The men, ambushed behind the door, heard a chorus of hysterical screams.

They could take few more details out of her, except that he was a son of old family, never married, with an elven beauty and exquisite sensitivity...

The mother, stunned, inquired about the intentions of the young man. Her daughter appeared to think for a moment and, with a little childish pout belying her grave tone, she said:

\- "He is much older than me, but he is not yet ready for marriage. I do not mean to hurry him! We should take our time!"

Speechless before such maturity, the mother agreed to spare the father and prepare him calmly to these news.

.oOo.

The father found this idyll very hasty, and the circumstances particularly unseemly - a young man of good family should not lead the girl of his thoughts into shadows and dangers. Draconian security measures fell upon the household. After locking his daughter in her room, he decided to surprise the young dandy.

Caranlain climbed atop his small but valiant dungeon and sat for a long watch. He scanned the night without failing, determined to spot the cheeky lad if ever he came. Hours weighed heavily on his lids, but he stood up immediately when a distant murmur rippled the smooth darkness.

Far below, a clear wisp was dancing on the road, eclipsing the semaphore his people had lit at dusk. The father's eyes widened like saucers when he recognized his youngest child frolicking at night. He roared like a bear, harmed in his pride and threatened in the flesh of his flesh. How had she managed to escape? And what madness, magic or attraction made her sparkle like a flare of hope adrift on a sea of ink? Grabbing his red cleaver, he plunged into the ocean of liquid darkness, to rescue his precious little girl.

.oOo.

In great fury, Caranlain rushed down to the greenway. He called, horned, raged. A heavy reluctant silence spread around him. Fog seemed to fill the air with its icy indifference. Then a light tune, blown from a hill pipe, scattered several mocking notes, as through the veils of a remote time. Sweat chilled the executioner's powerful spine.

Controling his fury and now fully aware of the danger, Caranlain took a firebrand and followed the trail of the sour tune, in the winding alleys of the old necropolis. Relentless, the father called his child with his heart and his voice, feeling around him the growing malevolent attention of restless souls. He erred lengthily, waking the minions and calling upon himself the anger of vengeful spirits.

The pipe hushed. A curl of fog revealed a large stone portal, that opened on a lighted tomb under its turf tumulus. The former executioner shivered with horror. His little girl must be there for sure, laying at the mercy of a spirit of hatred and thirst for her life. He brandished his loyal red edge and advanced valiantly.

.oOo.

Unreal shimmers lit the stone vault. Caranlain set his firebrand on a door-flare, but men's light is no avail in the dead's kingdom. A skeleton, wrapped in gold chains, seemed to be waiting for him from the depth of time, sat on his stone throne. A red flame burned at the bottom of his hollow orbits. The man stopped, fascinated by the hypnotic sparkling of the malevolent will.

Grey foggy arms brushed and wrapped him like wet algae in an icy stream, striking him with stupor. Fleeting and macabre images assailed his mind – a childish hair, disheveled by the wind, revealed a fleshless face, eaten away by the gangrene. He firmly pushed this corruption back, but another scene sprang to his mind – his daughter paralyzed under the impure embrace of an obscene corpse.

This time fury overwhelmed him. His cleaver beat down on the skeleton with great strength. As he frenzied and the golden-helmed skull threw its last anger look, before being smashed by the red edge, Caranlain felt his limbs abandon him. The torch light flickered and hope died in his heart as he stumbled on the cold paving stones.

.oOo.

Caranlain awoke to the sound of a little treacherous tune, sour as a coward's threat and insidious as a contagious disease. He found that he was hampered on a high stone bench. He tried to struggle, but his limbs were paralyzed. The odious tune gradually gained strength and confidence, forcefully chanting the hateful vanity of its abject repetitions, fed by the fear and helplessness of the sacrificed.

Then he saw it. A long twisted creature was standing at his benchside, bitterly withered and mad with desire to annihilate this life intended to run freely in the sun. A short and pale blade in hand, the hideous corpse, covered with scales and eaten by decay, chanted its litany of killing, attentive to the fear of its victim. Caranlain's terror was boundless – then the former executioner fully understood the ultimate desperate fury of the doomed. When the infamous casting reached its acute and powerful pitch, the hysterical ghoul, with flaming orbits, was brandishing its pale dagger above the the unfortunate's heart.

A word snapped like a death sentence. But the voice seemed like a beautiful starry night:

\- "Down!"

The awful creature retreated, cowering on itself and hissing like an old cat. Two figures, inhabited by a soft diaphanous light, entered the barrow. The largest, bearing a majestic authority, came casting irresistible injunctions to the ghoul, who writhed belching up in the dust and returned to its sarcophagus. The slenderer, graceful and considerate, unfastened the unfortunate Caranlain and calmed him with a kiss on the forehead:

\- "Come on Dad, you should not linger here at night! It's dangerous, you know! "

.oOo.

The former executioner had been obediently led back by his youngest, to his bloody and still family hospices. After a bowl of hot soup, and in the light of day, he had recovered his spirits:

\- "But who is this young man, Firniel? What is his father's job? »

As you can see, parents are all the same everywhere!

\- "His father died long ago. He was the head of a powerful family!

\- But then he does nothing of a living, he is a nobleman?

\- Yes, he is a noble man, in every sense of the word. And he is not idle: he cares about containing evil spirits, like you, Dad! But it's true he… sleeps all day long.

\- Why did he not come home along with us?

\- He cannot, he's... allergic to sun. And all these sigils everywhere, these give him a headache!

\- But what do you do all night long, walking by the Downs?

\- I've told you, Dad, this is where he lives! »

Caranlain did not know there was a noble mansion in the Downs.

\- "You've already gone to his home?

\- ... Yes, Dad... "

The daddy considered the short answer and the anxious look of his daughter. While understanding, he felt older, all of a sudden. He sighed deeply:

\- "It will be very hard for your mother..."

The girl smiled. Indeed her father still had some menial details to overcome…

.oOo.

Since that time, the hospices of the red edge have been living to the rhythm of rather peculiar domestic arrangements.

Firniel divided her time between her father's refuge and her husband's barrow. During the moonless weeks, she left the living world to abide underground in the company of Lord Eldanar. This last descendant of a noble family of former Arnor, swore by Mandos, a long time ago, not to leave Middle Earth before experiencing true love...

This tiny twist to the conservative convenances of En Eredoriath had some advantages. The fight against evil spirits that plague the graves, was very effective. The merchants were able to resume shuttle between Bree and Thalion, the road was much safer since Firniel found this exquisite ally.

Obviously, there were also a few minor drawbacks...

Every month, the master of the hospices of the red edge had to bring his son-in-law, what kept him in good shape. We all know that love is blind, but you would certainly not want your beloved daughter to live with a husband in advanced state of decay?

As a matter of fact, lord Eldanar, the step-son, needed two good pints of fresh blood every new moon in his barrow.

The guests of the bloody hospices did not all get back on the greenway in the morning... But rest assured, the former executioner always chose, for the needs of his step-son, a hardened criminal or questionable character, whose disappearance would bother no-one...4

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Sindarin caran, red and lain, edge.

2 The Hirdor (hereditary domain) of En eredoriath encompassed Tyrn Hyarmen (the South Downs), and Tyrn Gorthad (the Barrow-Downs).

3 These are signs, seals, that bear thaumaturgic powers, affixed to repel spirits and ghosts.

4 This short novel was inspired by the film « l'auberge rouge » and the goddess Persephone.


	9. Visitors in the cellar

**Visitors in the cellar**

.oOo.

_At the Sign of the Drunken Goose…_

A wide and austere hobbit stepped hesitantly under the sandstone arches. He was hailed with strange words but a friendly air. This Big Folk hostel was like the Green Dragon, but still, what a strange name... the Drunken Goose! He climbed on a stool. The regulars made efforts so that he would feel comfortable, but they had not received any hobbit from the Shire for quite a long time. He ordered his meal with reluctance and caution, under the amused looks, while news were shared, from a much bigger world than his usual horizon.

First sniffing some leeks and tatters soup with an informed air, he was tempted, then he sank into a diligent and repetitive swallowing, from which he emerged reassured. Thus he spent a long time before giving a fresh look around.

Now that he was satisfied enough to appreciate the food's quality, he took his time. The cabbage broth, roasted lamb and beans had conquered his taste. But the beer definitely had him adopt the place: definitely acceptable!

So when his turn came to tell a story, he gathered his childhood memories...

.oOo.

_Somewhere in the Shire, a few years ago…_

-"Go ahead !"

Encouraged by her brother's gestures, little Pimpernel crawled among the rushes, imitating the hunting fox. Whereas her adorable chubby limbs demonstrated the proverbial Hobbit skills, that was still the kid's first robbery. Her quilts sprang up as red plumes, from time to time exceeding the bushes when the burglar apprentice ventured to have a bold blue glance at her future victim. A last look back, in order to strengthen her determination - "Go ahead!"- And the little hobbit-girl crawled among the last iris.

In the wash house in front of her, the old damsel Neatmole was vengefully beating her laundry struggling on parts of her trousseau, patiently embroidered over the years of waiting for a more and more unlikely suitor. She did not trust anyone else to care and refresh her precious fabric. From time to time, the laundress carefully screened her embroidery at the early morning rays, while grumbling some curse at her lazy debtors. When the precious laundry shone with a virginal splendor worthy of herself, then the old Neatmole suspended it to the ropes to dry.

Silent as a marauding cat, Pimpernel reached the slabs driveway, and hid behind the parapet. Dry cloth, carefully folded, lay there beside the jewelry of the minx, who removed them before handwork.

While the miser and severe laundress recited her assets to the rhythm of her paddle strokes, the nimble girl subtilized a piece of tulle. She was about to leave on all fours, when she advised a magnificent golden pin that had belonged to her mother.

The bitter memory of her Mummy in tears before the intractable bailiff and embarrassed constable, rushed to her throat, sweeping any doubt and silencing any remorse. Yielding to the irresistible temptation and overwhelmed by a delicious sense of retributive vengeance, she took the jewelry and stole away.

.oOo.

Once at the top of the valley, she triumphantly exhibited her booty. Her brother dragged her farther away. The expected triumphal praise turned into bitter recriminations:

\- "I told you, only the veil! The gold pin is no longer Mummy's! " her brother Padigar sharply rebuked her.

Their father, Rudigar Wickerfine, farmer of the old maid, could not pay his annual fee after a poor harvest. Neatmole had accepted the family jewel as a pawn, but she wore it openly, to the chagrin of her debtors, whose farm adjoined the minx's luxurious hole.

\- "Daddy may get into big trouble because of that!"

The girl burst into tears, her baby face dotted with freckles, flooded with the tears of injustice:

\- "But the veil too was her's! And you told me to take it!

\- We shall give it back! We just need it this morning! "

The veiled blue look of the little one got tougher, as the implacable child's logic detected some flaw in the reasoning of her elder brother. With her thin golden eyebrows furrowed and small fists clenched, she launched defiantly:

\- "Well then, we give the pin back too! So no trouble for Daddy!"

.oOo.

Too late.

The hoot of an old owl, injured in her pride and property, went up from behind the hill. The Neatmole lady had certainly discovered the theft. Padigar took the tulle and the pin and ran to the laundry. The old lady was furiously rummaging her cloths, trying to gather the neighborhood. No way could he discreetly give the pin back!

However, Padigar approached, driven by a sudden inspiration, remaining hidden in the gorse. He held the pin, cocked his arm and... splash!

The jewel dipped in the wash pond, a few feet from the rim where Pimpernel had taken it.

The old buzzard ceased her noise, sure she had detected a suspicious noise. Her magpie look, attracted by the glint of gold under the lapping, lit with a beacon of hope.

Padigar, before disappearing, had the satisfaction to see her splashing in the wash, unstable on slippery stones.

As he was walking away to join his little sister, he heard a resounding "splash", followed by a delightful string of profanities he could only half understand.

.oOo.

With serious conspirators faces, the two children were running along a hedge of hazel, boxwood and hawthorn.

\- "You see, we must be quick. If we can harvest it before adults find it, it will be sold a good price and we can help Daddy! When he returns from Bree-land, he will be proud of us. And maybe later, he gets Mum's pin back."

The little hobbits crept by valleys and glades, weighting these broader issues, with some hope pegged to their soul, and reached the Old King. This ancient oak was standing in the middle of a pleasant glade, populated by young crooked birches, like many courtiers eager to bow to their hoary sovereign. The respectable trunk, once decapitated by lightning, had survived and had replenished but it was now partly hollow, like a long cask.

The children unpacked their equipment and beheld the coveted treasure: a superb wild hive, industrious young stronghold nestled in the lap of the old affable and idle King.

.oOo.

Everything went for the best. Besides, the reader should never doubt the ingenuity, skill and perseverance that young hobbits can deploy for food, let alone some candy.

The light canvas had allowed Padigar to operate without interference, and therefore the small conquerors returned to the village without any bite, carrying a jar full of honey and a hive enclosed in a burlap bag. Padigar got a good deal with the bees but they kept the honey jar, which would make the delights of the family together with Daddy back from Bree.

Our urchins were even lucky: they could quietly return the canvas smeared with honey, by hiding it under the pile of wet clothes and embroidery, thrown pell-mell into the cellar, that their farm shared with Damsel Neatmole's mansion. No doubt she had not taken the time to inspect all her effects, in her hasty return to the fold...

.oOo.

Annihilated by the emotions of the day, Pimpernel and Padigar fell into the sleep of children, which grants oblivion of tests without losing their lessons, closes wounds without tarnishing their glory and restores, intact in the morning, the candid and feverish promise of a new sunny day.

The next day, Padigar had devised a new expedient, to relieve their dear Mummy from her hard work.

For poor mother Wickerfine slaved, entitled with the roles of maid, cook and seamstress for old Damsel Neatmole, moreover assuming the farm heavy works in the absence of her husband, who had gone to sale two oxen at the Bree fair. Her sewing had even ended up spoiling her vision.

Thus her son felt, in the absence of the family head, invested with the eminent role of food provider for the Wickerfine hearth.

Hence the brilliant idea of the day. While he was negotiating his hive, father Sorrelgrind had nearby complained, he had to attend the ford's Comitia for the day. What would become of the old farmer's early cherries, in the midst of harvest? It was essential to avoid the old hobbit, a loss that he could not afford!

.oOo.

After a hearty breakfast, hosted by the perpetual complaints from the irascible neighbor and landlady, the children armed themselves with a few bags and baskets, and slipped away in open fields.

At the end of the morning, they had left, at father Sorrelgrind's door, three large bags of gleaned cherries, in return for which, each child carried a fruit basket. It is true that, for the account, Padigar had to shake off some cherry trees, but several green fruits just do not bother to make jams, does it?

.oOo.

Their conscience perfectly serene despite this transaction unwittingly imposed to old Sorrelgrind, the children were returning to the farm, crowned with the satisfaction of accomplishment. Pimpernel hopped on the sentry, humming jingles, when she stopped dead. She stepped back and threw her brother a look of terror. White as a sheet despite her adorable freckles, the little anxious face seemed unable to inspire. Alarmed Padigar shook her a little. Pimpernel took breath, but to dump her overflow of screaming and crying.

Between sobs and gasps, the small Hobbit pointed a bird corpse, between two mounds near the road.

Padigar approached. A gray wagtail laid with her wing extended. He was about to free his sister from this distressing spectacle, when he realized that the bird was alive. A little plaintive cry startled Pimpernel, whose gasps of terror immediately turned into sympathy whining:

\- "Poor bird! Why does she not fly anymore?

\- I think she has a broken wing.

\- Waaaaa! It must hurt... Waaaaa! I don't want thaaaaat…"

Padigar, abashed, did not understand why the girl, who cheerfully squished ants to the rhythm of her nursery rhymes a moment ago, showed so fond of a wounded sparrow.

\- "Look, be reasonable! It happens, you know... Let me explain. You like Whirdy, old Neatmole's cat?

\- Yes, she is very soft ...

\- She has to eat, too. She catches mice and bir...

\- Waaa! I do not want Whirdy to eat poor little sick bird! Waaaa..."

Padigar vainly reasoned, comforted, cuddled, used authority, nothing helped - he had to bring the wounded bird.

.oOo.

The children settled the wagtail in a basket and hid it all at the bottom of the cellar.

Pimpernel was responsible for feeding it - children must assume their choices, had learnedly and firmly told her big brother! Despite her distaste for viscous and creeping things, Pimpernel courageously brought numbers of earthworms and cockroaches, the sparrow feasted on.

After a few days, Padigar felt sorry for his little sister. He procured - King knows how1! - A beautiful crate, painted with deep smooth red, in which he bred cockroaches, feeding them with the old Neatmole's leftovers.

.oOo.

A few days later, Pimpernel and Padigar were weeding the beans square, when they saw a strange man climbing the path and stop nearby. The children stared at the stooped old man, who was leaning on his staff, throwing them inquisitive looks. But a tender smile and fine wrinkles on the edge of his eyes, belied his angry eyebrows under the blue wide-brimmed hat.

\- "Well, should not be welcomed, an honest old man who has lost his way?"

Moved by a bad feeling, Padigar stood awkwardly while Pimpernel hid behind him, keeping an eye on the curious character.

\- "Have a good day, Sir… Sir... how, respectful?

\- Do you not know my name?"

Pimpernel took out her ingenuous face behind the skirts of her brother:

\- "Sir... Gandalf? The maj..juggler? "

The wizard suppressed a slight smirk - his reputation mattered to him more than he admitted. And about that, he disliked not being a majuggler...

\- "Absolutely! And in your opinion, what brings a majuggler at the farm of Wickerfine family, close to the workshop of the cooper Galabroc?"

Padigar, his face on fire, had suddenly frozen. Surprised Pimpernel looked at her brother losing composure and twisting his hands guiltily.

\- "Keep out of majuggler business because they are subtle and quick to anger!", growled the old man.

\- "I did not know that this beautiful crate was yours! I give it back to you right away!

\- In any case you knew that it was not for you, while grabbing it in Galabroc's storeroom! It was intended for my cousin, a... juggler too. What would father Wickerfine say, if he learned his son steals from his neighbors? "

Very soon the red magic box, marked with the rune G, was returned to its owner, while a shameful scarlet marked the little hobbit's brow.

\- "I shall check that Padigar and Pimpernel Wickerfine behave with dignity and help their mom till their dad's return, whom I met in Bree three days ago! And if I am not satisfied, I shall send you my terrible cousin Radagast who pays me a visit these days!

\- But that's not fair! We help Mummy all the time! And the crate was for Griselda my sick bird!", Threw the little one, from the top of her foot-and-a-half.

Nothing beats a sincere and vigorous childish indignation to question a wizard, even a magi-juggler, by shaking somehow his priorities. He did not show it, but the old man promised himself to keep an eye on this Griselda.

.oOo.

A few days later, the situation in the cellar was turning to a disaster. In the absence of the beautiful waterproof crate, cockroaches were walking in the shelves of the pantry, multiplying and attacking any poorly protected commodity.

Children were desperately fighting against the invasion, feeding the convalescent wagtail on their preys. Already Damsel Neatmole had complained her house was untidy. As for their mother, she was so tired, that she had not noticed anything yet, but the farm and the manor would shortly be completely contaminated.

.oOo.

The wizard opened the cellar's door. A huge cockroach sped between his feet. Embarrassed, Gandalf turned to his cousin:

\- It's here... I fear they have taken possession of the place. If you could fix this...

His pupil flaming, the brown wizard sternly sized up the infestation.

**\- "Well, we shall drive them out," he said in a tone so hard that even his accomplice shuddered.** 2

Gandalf, somewhat concern by this fierce determination, saw him move away apace, rummaging through his pockets in search of some secret elixir of his.

Puzzled, he sat on the stump, father Wickerfine had carved as an armchair, and filled his pipe. Pimpernel joined him and slipped her tiny hand in her favorite majuggler's callosum beater. Her flickering pout begged the gray pilgrim with a pleading look. The wizard affected a confident and serene look, but he wondered what alarming last resort measure, his honorable relative could concoct against the cockroaches invasion. As for Padigar, he stood sternly, with a closed face.

A few minutes later, cousin Radagast returned, with a perky and combative look. He seemed deep in conversation with a ruffled ball of quills, from which emerged a small pointed nose, that retracted when the children approached.

\- "May I present Picky to you? It is a brave and young hedgehog, who will not refuse to help you in your misfortune, since he wins a home in the bargain. He loves cockroaches, earthworms and other small annoyances of hobbit homes."

.oOo.

The children, first amazed by cousin Radagast's ingenuity, quickly adopted the little hedgehog, which proved clean, discreet and sociable, as far as he quickly won the good graces of Whirdy. He led a merciless war at every creeping creature and quickly got the manor and farm rid of their adverse commensals. He became their silent and faithful guardian, working at night to rest all day long.

When father Wickerfine returned, well satisfied with his long run, he found a peaceful home and life resumed its reckless course.

The wagtail herself, cheered up by one of Radagast's liquor, had regained the skies. She reappeared from time to time, and her returns never failed to announce a happy event or the visit of some majuggler.

.oOo.

A few years later, when the old lady Neatmole departed this world, she left a vast legacy behind. To the astonishment of the neighborhood, her farm was bequeathed to her tenants! Furthermore she attributed to Pimpernel, in anticipation of her wedding, a magnificent golden pin. This pin, that came from the distant South, was a cicada insect, unknown in the Shire. Most considered it a cockroach, but the jewel would remind Pimpernel all her life long, the dangerous and delicious time of childhood.

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Expression from the East Farthing, meaning that only the King of old, thanks to his legendary powers -juridicial, thaumaturgical or far-seeing, or whatever - would be able to discover how that could happen.

2 This sentence was a constraint imposed on the story. Indeed it nearly gave birth to it all…


	10. The young ogress

**The young ogress**

.oOo.

_At the Sign of the Drunken Goose…_

The black oak door opens with a roar from an icy wind burst, which invades the great hall with swirling flakes up to the central pillar. A heavily harnessed dwarf closes the ancient porch, hits his boots and snorts joyfully. Dissatisfied with his entry, that has not captured all eyes, he adds more, groaning while putting his sac down and beating his flanks with energy. He advances to the fire in order to ostensibly make the ice cubes of his beard drip on the floor, and then hail the assembly with a refrigerated air:

-« Even in the Iron Mountains, my distant cousins' lands across Mirkwood, we have never seen such a winter! »

Flattering the local jingoistic spirit usually turns out wise and profitable. There is always an old timer to agree with you or a presumptuous youngster to outbid. As a matter of fact, a granny exclaims behind her spectacles:

-« Oh well that is nothing but sparrow fluff! Had you seen the Long Winter - four shivery and windy months, our sheep destroyed and dread famine... I were a wee girl, in fifty eight...1 »

And here is our peddler palavering with locals, orating with ease and listening to the elders with a deferential air.

By the way, do you remember this dilettante? In Thalion he is known as Bonim the dwarf. It's probably not his real name, but I'm not sure Master Gigolet or Finran the innkeeper themselves, know much longer. Bonim trades luxury goods on the Greenway, in the Shire and beyond.

In fact he arrived this afternoon, but he thought the scene of the storm survivor, played before a full house, would help attract attention and sell his trinkets. The inn's regulars are no fools, but they enjoy the company of the prankster and his exotic stories.

Late in the evening, the dwarf opens his wonders chest and exhibited weird ivory figurines. So here are the unsold goods of the moment! But wealthy amateurs, Borim usually circumvents, show a little wary: they represent women with strange but captivating looks, elongated eyes, exuberant hair and canines too long for harmless wood fairies...

Then our dwarf, who understands dream is the luxury of thought2, begins an improvisation of his...

.oOo.

_Somewhere in the far east, a long time ago, at the ogre's castle..._

\- "Try not to devour your to-be son-in-law, for once!"

The woman darted a serious look of dark velvet in the tawny eyes of her husband, offering him the cup of departure. The ogre grabbed the goblet from the white hands lined with lace, and emptied its thick wine with a single sip. Responding with a somewhat forced grin to her indulgent smile, the ogre wiped his stained mustache with the back of his richly furred tunic.

-"My dear, sublime among the beautiful, do not lengthen my remorse! The last one fainted before the end of my argument - my indulgence forgave his rudeness, I swear, he still has the use of all his bones! As to the former, he emptied his stirrups and fled faster than his horse – which I definitely ate!

\- How reasonable you were - a frugal and worthy dinner! But for today, make sure to praise especially the beauty, education and dowry of your daughters!

\- Sweet Cailin, gentlemen listen to me… only armed with thoughtfulness... if not worse! Our misfortunes and weaknesses swell excessively in the imagination of men, disguising our lives under unspeakable curses! Good fortune when I am not stoned at!", Sighed the ogre, shaking his red mane.

Seeing his wife's imploring look, he added quickly, with a guilty air of a cute baby-bear:

\- "But I do crunch the rogue only if he disrespects any of my darlings!"

The majestic woman huddled modestly against the powerful leather and silk plastron:

\- "You are the best of fathers and husbands!

\- I shall consider myself such, when my daughters are married! As for the glory of our nuptials, it all comes back to you, my love, rest for my tormented soul and better part of myself! Embrace our daughters and salute your noble son on my behalf!"

The ogre kissed the clasped hands of his beloved, girded his hat with a green plume and leapt over the porch. Rolling down the wooded slope of a giant's boot step, he quickly disappeared behind a dark shoulder of the mountain.

.oOo.

-"Mother, Leana lost her mesh again!

\- Darna, you rather take care of your tapestry! You embroidered three legs to your suitor!

\- This is not true! That is his sword!

\- Oh yeah? Hanging there, he'll end up crippled! The suitor will no longer be suitable for much... "

Under the mocking giggles of the company, the youngest and her sister confronted, red with anger, the former brandishing her knitting needles, the latter drawing a sharp tongue. The eldest, interposing bravely amid belligerents, tried to reason with them:

_Chiadha_ \- "How could a young man court you, if you behave like harpies?

_Darna_ \- It is clear that you will be served first, Chiadha!

_Chiadha_ – That is irrelevant... Father will find a husband for each of us. He promised that for the love of our mother!

_Meara_ \- Pff! This would require Father not to eat them!

_Fenella_ \- If he eats some, it means they are worthless!

_Kennocha_ – But we could taste some, we too!

_Meara_ \- If the next one survives, I shall cope with him! "

The elder sister gave her a suspicious look:

_Chiadha_ \- "What do you mean exactly?"

The mother returned to the hearth of the dungeon, where she initiated her daughters to the sewing work, hoping to discipline their somewhat wild nature. Her quiet and soft voice restored calm, if not accord:

\- "Now, now... It has been quite a long time nobody ate any suitor..."

The girls' attentions were turned back on cattails, meshes, balls and color chart, but the gentle tranquility, punctuated only by the crackling of logs in the fireplace, did not last long. The youngest grumbled constantly, rebelling against the imposed tasks. For a pleasant change, she had been assigned the loom, the repetitive movements of which turned her hours odious. Her distaff eventually fell on the floor:

\- "I've had enough! I need fresh air!

\- The first quality of a maiden is devotion, who is the sister of patience and daughter of sacrifice.

\- What an unbearable family! So only girls must make efforts and be devoted? "

Shocked, the good mother bridled, preparing a highly moral harangue. But she realized the drawn and serious face of her youngest betrayed quite a determination, overstepping her small rebellions, violent but short-lived, that had been animating their secluded life for some time now. This shook her more.

Fortunately, an event came to distract the attention of the women - the tired step of a heavy horse resounded on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Immediately the dresses massed at the high windows' colorful diamonds:

\- « Armac ! Hello ! Can you see me ?

\- He's hurt!

\- No, that's his venison's blood!

\- What's this casket?

\- I'll go and see!

\- Me too! "

This time, even the worthy mother quickened her pace to join her son, following the crush of abundant red hair girls rushing down the stairs. Naturally the youngest gushed first in her half-brother's arms, defeating Darna with a ruthless conqueror look.

Armac had an attentive smile for each. The young man, despite his long exhausting journey, greeted with the proud bearing of a prince in exile and the courtesy of a loving brother. The medley of her half-sisters took the burdens from him in an instant. The mount was taken to the stable, the weapons relegated to the rack, while many small hands, thin and strong, greedy and rivals, dragged the mysterious casket.

.oOo.

The young man kissed his mother and followed her into the dungeon, carrying on his back a huge boar, with long deadly defenses. He put the monster on a low marble table:

\- "That will help your husband channel his appetite!

\- Do not judge him too harshly ... He struggles with courage ...

\- I know what we owe him, and I help as I can, out of love for you.

\- His greatest wish is to find husbands for your sisters. Then perhaps he will find peace...

\- I do not know if curses of the gods may be fought, but I know that nothing can be done against a tarnished reputation in the eyes of men.

\- Whenever he has tried to remedy this and to help our neighbors, they took this for a confession of weakness and abused the situation... He is very fussy about his honor... So our neighbors are becoming scarce..."

Interrupted by hysterical cries, mother and son went upstairs to arbitrate the quarrels.

The girls were disputing the wonders of the casket.

\- "Please, Damsels! Stop squandering my shopping! Each of you will get her due!"

The young man began distributing his gifts:

\- "A golden ribbon from far Bozisha-dar for the wisest of my princesses!"

Chiadha bowed in a graceful bow while receiving the offering.

\- "A lace of Sampar's immortal flowers for her impatient challenger!"

Darna grabbed the fine work unceremoniously, parrying her bright red hair in the mirror of the great hall.

The distribution continued, filling each girl's expectation in an unexpectedly but carefully adapted way.

When greedy Meara received silver cutlery from the rising sun hills, youngest Leana cast an envious glance at the bottom of the casket. It was her turn and only the big mysterious bag was left! Her half-brother emphatically announced, handing her the bag, which contained wooden cubes:

-« The magical dwarven runes from distant Iron Hills, so that our youngest acquire the letters of a lass to marry! "

Leana lost her enthusiasm all of a sudden. She was so disappointed, a bitter lump formed in her throat. Until then, she would not even have been able to guess what could make her happy. Her beloved elder brother, who had accompanied her childhood with such solicitude, had always guessed how to fulfill her wishes. Once again, he had found out: she wanted to be a grown-up. To be free. But this gift froze her: for the sake of raising her from childhood, he confined her to marriage...

The disappointment girl hiccupped. Her announced fate unfolded before her misted eyes as a road lined with impassable cliffs: ogre's daughter, she would quit her present subservience for that of a lordling. The baronet, in exchange for a substantial dowry and the obedient sacrifice of her whole life as a woman, would erase, by his name, the infamous Ogre's lineage. No doubt it would take Leana to quell the wild nature of this line, not to succumb to the temptation to revive the most reviled crimes, and even her thirst for freedom.

She roared her despair, shaking her red mane - all she wanted was some riding, free as her brother. Instead, he subjected her by heinous gifts. Leana ran away crying.

.oOo.

The ogre and his wife took counsel. Their youngest girl was causing them a lot of worry. The ogre was struggling every day to regain some of the humanity, his destiny denied him. He was enraged that his offspring, the immaculate part of himself, would feel threatened by boredom and succumb to her hated instincts.

After a heated debate, the ogre went out by a terrible stormy night, donning his high boots and girding his large hood.

When he returned, he hung in the upper room of the dungeon, a large iron cage.

.oOo.

In the morning, he gathered the family and revealed his decision: a band of petty-dwarves was hiding at the bottom of the cage, trying to evade the curiosity of the household.

\- "For moons, these wandering dwarves have been transgressing the boundaries of my property, and digging my mines without any grant. Today they meet their fate for violating my right and my authority!

\- Oh, how small they are!

\- Look! This one has a forked beard!

\- Will you listen to your father?

\- Hum, hum! I therefore assign them a penance: to distract my youngest and beloved daughter! Here are your new toys, my darling! "

The youngest girl raised an astonished gaze to her gigantic father, calculating his motivations - were these palliative husbands in miniature? - while her sisters were grumbling in unison :

\- What? We too want to be distracted!

\- Just for her? Could I not taste some?

\- They are not for eating!", Roared the ogre with a violence that belied the encouraging humanity of his remarks. He corrected soon with more moderation:

\- "Well, if they behave! Besides, there is a golden rule: Only one can exit the cage at a time! It is forbidden to play with several companions! It would be wrong! This will prevent them from thinking to escape. Moreover, it also will prevent you from getting tired too soon... "

Leana never imagined being offered a living being before her sisters – even less an entire cage! Her embarrassment prevented her from immediately imagining all the distractions she could draw from them. But her sisters seemed to have definite ideas on this matter, and did not fail to expose them with some bitterness or obvious jealousy.

So the youngest girl warmly thanked her father, not for the gift's appropriateness, but for the heady feeling of power that monopoly gave her. She suspend the cage in her bedroom and her father solemnly gave her its key...

.oOo.

All morning Leana tried her new toys, forcing them to take roles that the petty-dwarves found particularly degrading. For lunch, she made up a meal and played the dinette: she chaired a royal table, while the guests – from their cage - took turns to praise her great intelligence, cunning and brilliance of her personality, and told her distracting tales. Attracted by her -sometimes outraged- laughter, the sisters made frequent visits, but the jealous were turned away whatever their reason.

By early afternoon, Leana enlisted the most grumpy of her toys for feats of strength and skill. As the rascal was reluctant, he received a slap that sent him knock on the mantelpiece. When the girl realized the toy did not move any more, she began to cry with vexation. This racket added to the protests of the dwarves, who shouted in their cage.

Attracted by the noise, Chiadha and Darna burst on the scene:

\- "Will you quiet down? The whole castle is napping!

\- Waaaa! He won't walk any more...!

\- I'm afraid it shan't work so well now! "

Indeed, the bearded puppet was lying on the ground, a big bump on his head. His short leg had an unlikely and awkward angle.

\- "Now there! The day hasn't gone, you've already broken your toy! Are you not ashamed? These toys are fragile!", Exclaimed her scandalized elder.

The dwarves redoubled their protests. With a sly look, Darna carelessly added :

\- "Father will be furious! Your punishment will be terrible... "

She let the young girl frighten for a moment, under the disapproving eye of her elder. Then she opened the door of salvation:

\- "You should start by repairing it...

\- How do I do that?

\- It is rather complicated and very long... but I could help you... if it were my own toy of course..."

The youngest girl gazed a dark and crafty look on her calculating and dishonest sister. But cunning had submitted guilt, which capitulated quickly:

\- "You may have it as well, anyway it is broken..."

Darna revived the banged up dwarf, straightened his leg and immobilized it despite his screams. Finally she gave him a drop of mead she had pilfered. She got him back into the cage, where his companions took care of him in a deep accusing silence. An old dwarf glared the young ogresses with contempt, a flickering flame of hatred in the depths of his dark eyes.

\- "Ow!, How ugly he is! What livid petty eyes!

\- Um, but he looks very energetic and determined. I like this big turgid nose of his!

\- Oh, we all know you don't love boys for their conversation!

\- So you probably have better use of him? I do! You leave it to me, don't you, darling sister?

\- What do you mean to do with him?

\- He's to be my private mill drudge. Whenever I have the desire, he will light some stars for me! Dwarves are known for their extraordinary endurance... "

The scandalized and conniving clucking of her elder sisters frustrated Leana even more than usual – the young girl felt how, in a visceral and confusing way, these knowing laughters and looks excluded her from adulthood. She conceived a terrible rancor, without realizing that was precisely the state of mind where sneaky Darna meant to lead her.

After tough negotiations, that fostered all her siblings, it was therefore agreed that the new toys would be shared between all the sisters, but the youngest demanded in return that she would be accepted into the "circle of the elders."

So was it done.

.oOo.

Darna, lying on her draped bed, was gazing glittering stars, traveling on the canopy. A small-bearded and vindictive dwarf was running, locked in an endless wheel, animating the Magic Carousel which projected these wonders.

Her little sister, half-sullen, half idle, was swinging her legs off a stool, watching the imprisoned dwarves finishing their meals:

\- "What shall we do today?... Do dwarves know anything funny to do?

\- Lots of exciting stuff... They are petty and have agile nimble hands... They sneak everywhere..."

Leana threw a suspicious glance at her younger sister, who continued her affectations:

\- "Indeed there's something I've always wanted to see... but Father doesn't let us get there..."

Of course, that was enough to arouse the younger sister's interest:

\- "What is it?

\- Don't tell me you never wanted to see what Father holds hidden in his keep?

\- You know we're not allowed...

\- Exactly... It must really be terrible or priceless... Anyway that is where he keeps his precious boots!"

In their cage, crestfallen, disillusioned and aggressive, the petty-dwarves were watching, affecting an air of indifference and resignation, entrenched in the shadowed area of their prison. Yet the prospect of their torturer's treasure had inflamed the heart of the most combative. One of the youngest, slender and talkative, showed his face in the light that filtered through the bars:

\- "I am called Trarim, burglar by trade, laborer of lonely girls dirty-duties..."

The rebellious and licentious sparkle that animated the petty-dwarf's pupil managed to accord with the disobedient moods and dissident temperament of beautiful Darna. She ran a greedy tongue over her teeth and approached the cage, causing the reflux of the other dwarfs in their prison:

\- And what shall I do with you?

\- I can find a way to introduce you in the storeroom... "replied the petty-dwarf knowingly.

\- "Capering with a burglar? I fear your keychain lacks the right key... "

The dwarf scowled like a jilted lover:

\- "Then you'll have to imagine a reward at the measure of the danger..."

Leana protested, feeling that once again, she was not told everything. But the transaction was concluded: Trarim would steal away the key to the storeroom and hand it over to Darna, for a reward that was not uttered before her.

The youngest girl suspecting some cross, she promised herself to be in the game.

.oOo.

Unlikely couple, the two conspirators progressed stealthily in the corridors of the dungeon. Magnificent Darna claimed to parade, dressed with her tail dotted with Sampar's immortal flowers. Trarim followed slavishly, holding the robe'stail as a living cherub.

\- "I advise you to fulfill your end of the bargain," growled the petty-dwarf, with a sidelong glance at the bare ankles of the ogress.

\- "First show yourself up to it! Then only you should deserve the favor of my appetites! "Retorted the girl with a languorous look.

They stopped before oak double doors, high and wide, from where emanated scary snoring. Darna pretended to grasp the iron.

\- "One moment please, interrupted Trarim, leave it to the professional!"

Like a squirrel, the petty-dwarf climbed along the jamb, and poured on the imposing hinges, some oily drops from a flask hanged at his belt. Then the burglar crept into the room, inch by inch. Since his bare feet gave him a perfectly quiet move, he reached the middle of the roughly tiled room with ease.

A whole trunk was finishing burning in a huge chimney. Its red glows allowed barely distinguish the sleepers' shapes, buried under the thick furs of a gigantic bed. But Trarim was never mistaken by the instinct of gold. In an instant he slid to the lady's seat, hoisted on it and began to open her jewelry box.

\- "Not that way!", Whispered Darna from the door ajar.

Snoring suddenly ceased. Trarim abandoned the chest with a dark look and pointed to his accomplice, gesticulating furiously from behind the chair back, to kindly stop this racket.

But Darna started up again:

\- "The belt! The keychain at his belt! The big key!"

This time the ogre began to mumble in his sleep:

\- "Mm... Petty whippersnapper! Mm, mm... one single bite! Mm... "

Trarim, angry towards the stupid lass, left his hiding place and looked under the bench -almost a table for him! -where the ogre had left his cloths.

Racked with fear, he searched feverishly and took the key from the chain. The ogre turned heavily in his bed. Was he driven by a dark resentment, or did he afford a simple precaution? Prior to dodge, Trarim placed under the bench, an immortal flower from Sampar, he had retracted in the corridor on the robe's tail of his beautiful accomplice apprentice burglar.

.oOo.

Once the parental door was closed, Darna greeted Trarim with a bright smile. As the dwarf aimed a dark glare at her, she snatched the key out and exclaimed with a mischievous air:

\- "What are we waiting for?"

\- "What are you waiting for what?", Interrupted a high and offended voice from the shadows down the hall.

Leana stepped forward, preparing to pour a flood of blame on the guilty, without knowing exactly what she reproached them: their conspirators deeds, or not being embarked in the conspiracy...

Darna cut short, eager not to drag on:

\- "Very well, since you want to do like grownups, follow us!"

Then she added in a tone half maternal, half malicious:

\- "But are you sure to stand what will be revealed to you?"

Darna, Trarim and Leana went down to the depths of the dungeon, up to the prison cells of oblivion. It was very cold there. The burglar felt his hair stand on his head, as if the memory of old crimes, forgotten in the dungeons, had awaken their slumbering consciousness.

In front of the steel door of the paternal keep, Darna hesitated. She composed a magnanimous attitude and liberally allowed her sister to turn the key herself in the forbidden lock.

The three conspirators entered under the vault, holding their breath. Tanned skins of wild beasts hung suspended at meat hooks. When they finally breathed, mist swirls escaped from their mouths unable to utter a sound. The places seemed frozen in anticipation of the master's return.

The ogre's Hunting paraphernalia and outfit lay prominently in a corner. Large boots, recently greased, waited for the next game hunting.

A little further, carcasses were aligned under the arch. A rabbit the size of a boar seemed to expect the cook, impaled on its pin. The younger ogress seemed fascinated by the cold room, her feeling mixing the hunter's enthusiasm for well-hung meat, and a deeper spell, like an appeal to her lineage's honor. Meeting her eyes for a moment, Trarim saw himself grilled with an apple in the mouth and parsley in the ears.

But they came to a second door. Darna and the burglar paused, savoring in a knowing glance, the fever of transgression and the approach of gold. Leana, terrified by the fascination of her elder sister, refused to open it. But Darna snatched the key from her hands, and the girl crying. The accomplices broke into the strong room.

.oOo.

When the burglar came quaking out of the second room, he stumbled and had to curl for a few moments to gather his forces and senses.

Darna came in turn, with the look of the enlightened. Proved to herself, she likened her fate gratefully. Heaving a sigh of contentment in the cold air, she turned to Trarim with a smile of gluttony and fullness. Discovering nice size fangs, she mischievously scolded while shaking her red mane:

\- "My tail lacks a flower, you lecherous dwarf!"

The beautiful approached her accomplice... and let's just say Trarim was never to be heard about.

.oOo.

Since Darna sank in mysterious occupations in the basement of the castle, young Leana seemed sad. The household no longer echoed with her revolts. She wandered sometimes for no reason, with an empty look. In her place, Chiadha even had to nourished the dwarves in their cage. Even these prisoners wondered what was wrong.

The dwarf Broruin, in particular, seemed to experience feelings of compassion for little Darna. Chiadha, who was very worried about her little sister, charged the dwarf to console her.

All three spent time together. Broruin displayed treasures of imagination to distract his young mistress, evoking the splendors of distant peoples, the subtleties of the deep south princely courts, or war wonders of the Eastern nomads.

Nothing helped.

Or rather, only Leana remained insensible to the dwarf's scholarship and diplomacy. Chiadha, meanwhile, came to believe that such knowledge would be of great help for her father. To find a husband, you had to know the world and its practices.

But how could she convince her father to appoint such a precious help? The ogre despised dwarves, and these ones particularly...

Light came from Leana herself. To silence the loquacious who was telling her Khuzdul poems, she finally ordered him to find a husband for her sister, like a boring intruder would be asked to find a needle in a haystack.

Broruin the petty-dwarf thought for long. He imagined asking to be released in order to go, look and sound good parties. But ogresses would certainly not be fooled by such a crude trick... So he gained some time. He solemnly promised to find a husband and asked at length the eldest ogress about her own taste in husbands.

The girl was confused by the question. Indeed, she had never thought about that!

Leana looked up to the sky and let the amazing couple investigate further.

.oOo.

A few days later, the appalled household discovered Chiadha's departure. A letter placed on the rim of the large fireplace in the dungeon, explained that a husband had showed up and proposed, and that after all her father's efforts for getting her one, she did not feel right to refuse.

The ogre armed himself to catch the pedant who had not even asked his permission. But he no longer found his boots. He rushed on all the roads around, but came back empty-handed.

A few weeks later, the ogre received a missive from the Lord of the petty-dwarves. He behaved in perfect gentle-ogre and sent the envoy back, without a scratch - albeit by foot. Cailinn his lady read the letter and told him that their eldest daughter had run away with Broruin. They had found refuge within the petty-dwarven clan and were married following their rules. The king under the mountain hoped this union would seal the peace between them and allow redeem the hostages that the ogre had not eaten yet.

In his desire to make amends, the ogre wisely sent his son-in-laws to negotiate. The king resented about his subjects too old or infirm, but Arcam negotiated a good ransom, and dwarves were released - well almost all. The king would pay nothing to redeem Trarim the burglar, which suited everybody, since this dubious character, deemed undesirable by his own kin, could not be found in the castle!

Chiadha was presented to her family-in-laws, as a princess pursued by her evil stepmother in the forests' depths, and that her savior had brought her into his home. But the young bride soon discovered that, though petty-dwarves have a highly developed sense of family and clan, gold and jewels were their true love. Yet, revealed at her destiny, she was comforted by carrying her affection over her many children. As the story goes, she yielded to the customs of petty-dwarves - for lack of enough women, brothers often marry the same bride.

.oOo.

The ogre's castle boasted and crowed and feasted conspicuously. They had managed to marry the eldest daughter! In addition, wealth circumventing many horrified and outright refusals, several other marriages were being planned...

Certainly, the second daughter seemed to choose a different path... And the suitors were not all as shining as one might have wished. But, our ogre seemed to be closer to his redemption.

Thus was born the legend that some dwarves had managed to escape from the ogre's castle. This so-called exploit would have been achieved by getting the favor of the house's girls, rendering invaluable intimate services, by their cunning and their proverbial stamina! I leave you to imagine what popular sauciness made with this story ...

.oOo.

Indeed, following the dwarves' capture, the girls of the castle - each in her own way - had wisely abandoned to the destiny written for them. In a sense, the male dwarves had the ogre girls blossom.

Except one. The last, the young Leana, redoubled her anger and revolt. Her dwarf had had no effect on her.

One night she fled the castle. She did not leave any letter. She did not either leave her dwarf, because she felt sorry for she had once crippled him, and his rapacious king had abandoned him.

Leana buckled her father's boots, she had stolen that very evening and forged her unique destiny, refusing both the savagery of her lineage, and marriage enslavement.

The crippled petty-dwarf tried to have her feel guilty, in order to elicit some advantage, but he was promptly left at the gateway to the mountain of his people. Leana explained that she could not, unlike her sisters, let "her destiny be revealed" by any other than herself.

Therefore, the youngest girl was the first of her line, to escape both predestination and the curses of her family.

As for what happened to her afterwards... it is for you to imagine!

.oOo.

_At the inn of the drunken goose..._

Bonim the dwarf exposes his treasures. His small ivory figurines are pretty slim women with sinuous strands but their cat eyes and their canines give them a somewhat disturbing air in the eyes of Thalion's citizens. These statues depict the many facets of a goddess of the Far East, Princess of huntress hounds and spring renewal.

But now, through the artful eloquence of our street barker, they will be considered as young ogresses figurines, carved into the fangs of their father! The figures now suggest a kind of female ambivalence, combining the virtues of hearth and many forms of appetites!

Bonim the dwarf can now afford raising his prices: the rich and somehow stale bourgeois have much need to dream...

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 This is winter TA 2758-2759 (Shire Reckonning 1158-59), sadly famous, when famine stroke Eriador (days of Dearth).

2 Jules Renard


	11. The Tale of Master Gigolet

**The tale of Master Gigolet**

The small monotonous voice was reeling off the reading lines. Ducked on the grimoire, the fair-haired boy grimaced with effort while deciphering the exploits of Eärendil, leeward the boreal islands. His neighbor, a girl taut as a bow, anticipated with her lips in the next wonderful twist, by reading over his shoulder.

-« Next ! » said the master's harmonious voice after the son of Tuor had snatched his fellow mariners from the hydra's clutches.

\- "Not you, Eliahel, you already read sooner! Regain thour plots, mine kids!"

With a pout, the girl walked between the benches, dragging the little boy with her.

Under the high and mighty oak beams, a few flies buzzed in flour dust, streaking some light rays falling from skylights on the gloss lectern. In Master Gigolet's class, everybody read the same book. But what marvelous books! The latter, a leather-bound tome, with heavy illuminated pages, once belonged to the Royal Library of Thalion. The oldest handwritten note dated back to the early days of Thorondur, the first king of Cardolan.

Master Gigolet ran his scrutiny among his pupils. It was the turn of Mardoc and Lulabille. The small dunish boy was staring at the wall and the girl was ducking her head, in the futile hope that the educational ambitions of their magister would slip past them.

The master sighed. Sunny spring meadows captivated the minds of his students, young and old. He ended the class with a benevolent gesture. The children rushed into the attic, raising a cloud of flour, rushed down the stairs and scattered in the courtyard, celebrating their deliverance with a long, liberating and unanimous outcry.

Master Gigolet closed piously the lay of Eärendil and Elwing. He had saved and restored several dozen valuable books of the old castle library. He still fought on the most damaged and older ones, drawing on the wise's memories and his pitch or wax pots, to correct the ravages of time and parasites. The relics were kept in the driest area of the castle, the cereal reserve. The class also was held there, bringing together around the master, the cat who forsook hunting rodents to warm near the stove, artisans' sons sent there to learn to read and count, and young farmers escaping their chores.

.oOo.

Master Gigolet laid the venerable volume in the cabinet and prepared to get down to his copyist tasks. Suddenly he gasped: young Eliahel had remained sat in her place, a dull worry wrinkle barring her forehead, and was looking at him with a stubborn air.

-« What is it about, Eliahel?

\- I want to know the end! They are so slow reading… »

Master Gigolet smiled indulgently - "they" were even slower when writing or counting... But the little pupil's impatience intrigued him:

\- "Thou aspire getting acquainted with the outcome of the lay of Eärendil and Elwing! Hast thou no fear of sad an end? "

The master spoke formally to all students in his inimitable quaint style, down to the muddy and uneducated sharecropper offspring.

\- "I want to know anyway! Eärendil cannot die, I don't want that!

\- Running ahead of his destiny won't soften it! If the outcome was revealed, the next lesson would not be listened to! And what a shame when every book has been thoroughly read! »

A pained expression sneaked into the young sharp look. But the little girl knew the heartstrings of her old Master:

\- "Will you not invent a new story for me, Master Gigolet?"

The master scratched his occiput. Certainly, the thirst for knowledge and tales of this girl would have to be quenched! And why not convince her parents to make an assistant out of her... He leaned toward the girl with a learned and clumsy air, but his eyes twinkled with joy:

\- "I may not aucthorise thour voyage in the lay before thour cronies. But we may entertain ourselves with tonight's feasting! Thou would hear abundance of tales, bachelette believe me, and possibly flowered lays. Run forestall thour kin! »

\- Yahoooo! ", Squeaked the girl bounding down the stairs.

.oOo.

For that night, the innkeeper master Finran had crafted, with the help of his good girlfriend the baker, loads of pancakes for the feast of the equinox. The Inn of the drunken goose hosted many families who came to share their latest jams and the first honeys for a vigil of tales.

Excited, small Eliahel had mobilised her mom, dressed in her finery, her dad, who hid his shyness behind an impressive mustache, her grandma who loved pancakes because she hardly had any teeth left, and her younger brother even if he was only interested in stories when fighting occured.

When master Finran welcomed them, the girl declared that Messer Gigolet had promised to tell a story that he had kept by himself. The landlord took the opportunity and mischievously said:

\- "Hear ye, hear ye! Here Messer Gigolet will tell you the gesture of his youthful exploits! »

The ovation that always rises with great eagerness and spontaneity, to designate the first volunteer for each evening, had just befallen to the butler school-master, who now was to reveal his past.

.oOo.

« To tell the whole truth, the young Gringolet - here yours truly servant - heavily descended from his mountain – in every sense of the term! As a cadet of a modest family borne near Morthond in Gondor, I had left me father, a horse lad, and me mother, a laundress, for apprenticeship as a lawyer cleric. I learned calligraphy under the quick stick of this learned and severe provost of laws, by escribing change letters, reporting encrypted columns, copying all day long, signs nobody had given himself trouble to teach me, and solely fought their way up to my memory.

Dame! Please do not imagine such a status was to be complained about! I was garnished, sated, dressed out anew! Reading and abacus as a bonus! At night I warded the shop of me master. I had profits - without his acquiescence since my meager wages would have suffered - nimbly reading his library: books large and small, serious or poetic, in vernacular language or high tongue of old, classic or licentious.

\- Oh yes, Mother Harloat, licencious books too!, added soberly Master Gigolet, while casting a ribald look at the premium gossip of the village. Without a guide, the blind falls at every step!

Hereunto disparate and solitary readings resulted in various chances, the most lasting being mine oratory custom, that every joker in this room forgivingly describes as unique. »

Distributing some ales to the attentive tables, Master Finran allowed himself a slight clarification:

\- « These disparate and solitary readings had various unfortunate consequences, the most enduring being my language tics, that the greatest meekness of my best friends cannot help but call unique. I have to correct this last point: the verve of our friend raises our morale to mirth and joy, because it is delightfully unique! »

The sober face of Gigolet, that his pint had barely embellished with a shy pink, lit up with a modest and grateful smile. He continued:

\- "A customer of the shop took a liking to me - pen squire of the Lord of Morthond of his state. So Gringolet - for this was then me naming, inherited from me progenitor, his lord called him by the same nickname as his steed! - made his first humanities under his rule.1

Me Master and benefactor had trouble to convene –legal clercs are tough people and litigating over any case - but eventually I joined Dol Amroth's clerics copyists school for my thirteenth spring, on my esquire benefactor's funds.

There I crossed galore of common youths, some full of their ancestries, the others hungry for power. Under such healthy competition charter, me modesty - already very much turned down - and incomplete education earned me the involuntary - but sometimes deserved – role of those Baronets' scapegoat. Such high families cadets esteemed themselves winners by right. Gentry and merchant bourgeoisie contenders rivaled in pettiness for winning honors.

A baronet in particular - Howty, eldest of a family of judges and diplomats in the service of the crown, the Dowties - bitterly challenged the palm with me. Our ambitions to become loremasters in the Royal Library of Minas Tirith, though shared, could not admit two winners of the same age. This exacerbated rivalry promised therefore to occupy much of ours lives.

Indeed Howty won the first race for much mortification of thour servant, who narrowly missed the award – which was to accompany, as a clerk, a real diplomatic mission. From time to time, Gondor used to send a legate embassy to Tharbad. The northern Dunedain kingdoms had crestfallen a long time ago, but the city still held prestigious trade and influence. Steward Belecthor therefore displayed Gondor's power, when money could and wars obliged.

When Howty declined this first prestigious charge, the students thought this petty nobleman meant to shorten his way to the summit. Thou can imagine your servant Gringolet took the opportunity and went to his place in the legate's court"

.oOo.

Once is not custom, the butler of the Drunken Goose was seated before a pint, with satisfied looks on a captive but willing audience.

\- "I remember our glorious delegation! A dozen distinguished dignitaries -diplomats, linguists, civil engineers, officers... Thirty horses richly caparisoned conveying a foot soldiers company. One would have expected such an expedition in the time of powerful imperial numenor...

As many merchants joined the expedition.

Our passage through the worthy kingdom of Rohan was a long succession of receptions and feasts. The plenipotentiary was honored as a king, and his court lodged in good hostelry. While His Excellency was drinking in the company of King Brytta Léofa in his golden castel, I had privilege of transducing a commodity exchange treaty with the mouth officer of Meduseld...

Then I radiated with an immense pride! Can thou imagine? My first official sealed act!

Finally our company forded the Isen. The legate summoned me to witness as a clerk, his interview with the Lord of the lands lying over-river, at the southern foot of the Misty Mountains.

A powerful wizard2 dwelt there then, on behalf of Gondor it seemed, though he showed some jealous independence in his policies. The legate, who until then had behaved like a powerful lord in the fullness of his thought, stood before him as a petty figurehead. Then I understood why I had been selected, the last of the delegation subordinates, to attend the interview.

Many remonstrances were addressed to us. The magician Curunir was leading subtle dealings with the Dunish clans to restore peace among them. Gondor's interference was deemed unwelcome. The master of Isengard addressed to us with the tone of an accomplished general, for young and promising valiant lieutenants, but whose judgment ought still to be refined to mingle in such delicate matters. My Master had huge difficulty recalling Gondor's sovereignty, and had to concede that his passage was not to thwart Isengard's high dealings.

On the way back, the proud legate, angry at himself for being charmed so easily, let his despiteful wrath fall on my own head. Far from the skylights of the magician's tower, he resolved to act as he pleased for his lord the steward, and made me promise to report only what he dictated to me then. I began to understand why Howty had shunned this mission's duties.

Since Curunir had tricked me - for derision I presume- with the name of Gigolet instead of me patroname, the legate pretended this alteration was a great honor, which remained me name. Maybe it was also a way to remind me of me duty of reserve?"

.oOo.

"The expedition continued along the way, which pavement dwindled as Enedhwaith approached. We repeatedly had to suffer much from the exacerbated rivalries of the Dunish clans, the pacifying charter hatched by Curunir languished to settle. Our band, which rode so magnificent in Minas Tirith, was coveted for mounts and commodities. For two weeks, actual command was granted to the escort's captain, so hostile and defying seemed the crossed villages. Gondor's power was but far remembrance in most remote areas... With great difficulty, our squad repelled an ost who openly attacked all merchants convoys.

Woe to me! I was estranged from my buddies by sudden storm. Hiding me hide to escape the estropiors, I continued for a few days on the way to Tharbad, hoping to catch up the delegation.

Short of pittance, I was forced to beg for bread alms. What a mistake! The family I cried asylum at, deaming me helpless, grabbed me person, tied me and sold me to the highest bidder as hostage! "

.oOo.

"The Ardelaigh clan lived on petty thefts, far in the hills to the north of Dunland. They possessed tin and iron mines, they exploited with the help of various dwarven families. They constantly launched raids to get slaves for their mines. This loathsome clan acquired me as a vulgar nerd, led by his chief Sarlaigh, spineless and coward as a hare.

During weeks that seemed years, I worked as a convict, digging and propping the guts. Stifling heat and absence of light tamed the most resistant in less than a year. Air and pittance lacked. From time to time, the clan fired the proppings, and the ceilings collapsed. For a few hours, dust spilled, then the most ardent abuse resumed.

Mienne corpulence ligneuse laissoit espoir ténu de survivance sous icelles conditions. Mienne apparence vieillit de plusieurs années. Survivance m'échut pourtant, par le vouel de miens geôliers, de bailler ordonnances aux prisonniers de toutes patries. J'appris bien vite leur langue, proximissime des dialectes baillés des montagnards de mienne vallée de Morthond. Attaché à icel employ, j'eus occasion de grailler tantinet mieux que mes infortunés compères. Je lobois comme inoffensif et pusillanime, et me movois libertairement en l'enceinte de la mine.

Me thin corpulence let tenuous hope of survival under hereunto conditions. Me looks got several years older. Yet survival befell to me, by me jailers' will, who wished their orders should be understood by prisoners from all homelands. 3 I soon learned their language, which sounded like me Morthond Valley mountaineers' tongue. Attached to this employment, I had occasion to eat tad better than my unfortunate companions. I was deemed harmless and coward, and could freely move inside the mine.

Chance would have it, one of the gallery collapse coincided with a major feasting. One of their plunderers band brought a booty of Gondor wines, on which our guards had their share, thus hanging around somehow.

After stealing pittance and liberating prisoners at hand, I escaped.

.oOo.

The Ardelaigh Provost, in wrath, grabbed me collar the next day. I was unfortunate enough to be taken by a pond, far to the north of Dunland near the Sirannon river. Dunlendings are superstitious people. Hereunto beliefs obliged to sacrifice myself to the goddess of renewal, for the sake of expiation.

I was forced to fasting, then to chewing medicinal plants that removed any restraint. Slowly, I fell into an uncontrollable trance. I invoked the goddess in her dunish language, begging her to receive me in order to renew her vitality. I rushed in dark waters to devote my life to her.

Horn goat! On the other side of the lake, a large shape with a golden hair appeared, brandishing a long and pale spade. In me own delirium, I thought I saw an elf of old, a survivor from the glorious hours of Ost-in-Edhil. I invoked the warrior of the Noldor from the former ages, and now he replied loudly, imploring Elbereth, light carrier to the people in need.

The bawdy dunlendings believed this was a powerful ghost of yesterage, and fled madly at his wrath.

Thus master Finran - the Noldo warrior - could take me out of deadly waters with great cunning and, once my hallucinations calmed down, take me to a civilized place.

.oOo.

"In Tharbad, I discovered that the delegation had turned back toward Isengard, having lost half of its civilians, dead or abducted. The people around Gwathló river were deeply discomfited.

However the tribes4 of the low lands, contrite by the endless abuses of their hills' cousins, took their distance with weapons in hand. The rout of our expedition without even paying for the abducted, sounded like a death knell for the debris of Cardolan. Looters without faith nor law would take control of the roads. The plain then rebelled in a glorious burst of pride!

Finally, with no other support than his savior's, your servant endeavored to make himself useful as a translator, scribe and notary. "

Then Messer Finran interrupted :

\- "Our friend Gigolet is too modest. He personally contributed, through his testimony and skills, to seal an alliance between the Saralainn confederation and the former cantons from Thalion to Tharbad. It was an achievement that reminded everyone that the legacy of Cardolan kings had not completely disappeared. The hills' wild men were defeated, but that's another story ... "

.oOo.

Ultimately, master Gigolet had been persuaded to live in Thalion. The community needed a public writer, a scholar who could disentangle commercial commitments, or write agreements compliant with the subtleties of customary rights of the various ethnic groups.

He did much more. He founded a small school. He discovered the remains of the former royal library of the citadel and saved what could be mended. The community adopted him as its alive memory, a link with a glorious past which sense he revealed to them, so that this glory nourish their hope.

Indeed Master Gigolet had become the pen bailiff of a castle, although this was not the castle of his youthful dreams.

At times he wondered what had become of his old rival Howty. But this has long ceased to torment him.

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 I sympathized with a regular customer of the store, the private secretary of Lord Morthond. Gringolet - as it was then my name, handed down from my father, his lord called him like his horse! – attended college under his leadership.

2 Sarouman received the keys of Orthanc around TA 2759.

3 I managed to survive, thanks to my jailers, who needed someone to translate their orders to all their prisoners.

4 The Saralainn tribes occupy the lower Gwathlo bassin, from the Dol Tinare hills to the river estuary.


	12. Winter of wolves- the wandering hunt

**The winter of the wolves 1 – The wandering hunt.**

.oOo.

At the sign of the Drunken Goose, the noggin is played, history is rewritten, memory is wandered in, paradox is cultivated, in short, stories are told.

It has become a tradition, everyone brings in his talent, the joker, the inventive, the meticulous, the bombastic, the liar...

Master Gigolet narrates the history of the kingdoms of yore and heroic times. Villagers assault with saucy anecdotes. Rhast, the gravedigger and road worker, has made a specialty of shivering winter evenings. Bonim the dwarf peddler, turns pitches and relates exotic tales in the fashion of Eriador.

As for Finran the tavern master, he has collected many travel stories - particularly his own - but his special ability is to have his customers talk, instill confidence, flatter creative verve or revive lazy memories.

Of course passing travelers are invited to share news from distant lands and exchange tales or songs.

But some stories are not talk about.

Because relating misfortune does not exempt from it. It draws it nearer.

Thus some stories are untold, like this one.

.oOo.

_When Finran arrived at Thalion, it took a long time for him to be accepted. It took time to loosen tongues... Finally some brandy of pear helped the miller to consent and tell him..._

\- "Once upon a time, north of here, reigned the Hir1 of Tyrn Gorthad. A nobleman, a descendant of the first Numeroreans who had come to explore and enlighten our shores. It is even said he was a nephew of Odrazar the Great. He had managed to keep his County safe from the hordes of Angmar, and ensured the safety of the barrows.

He was animated by a passion for hunting. Some prediction was even said, at its birth, he would become the author of deeds, that a dozen generations were to remember.

Luck seemed to smile to him this year. He had won a landslide victory over the hillmen of Rhudaur, had rallied the Feotar townships and their militia, had assured an honorable harvest, and his wife was to give birth before spring.

After heavy snowfalls, fat and meat ran out at the castle and in town. The Hir therefore sent for his chief ranger, who summoned the villagers for a great hunt. So the lord would feed his household, as well as widows and orphans of the village.

Once again his luck and skill prevailed: a herd of deer was decimated.

The hunters were happily returning to the village, when the castle bell rang an alarm, signaling an extraordinary event. The Hir therefore left his beaters, leaving the game to them, and hastened towards his moat with his pack and pikemen.

Coming out of the thicket, they came across unusual traces, as if the mother of all wolves and her pack, had came from the North to the downs of Tyrn Gorthad.

The tocsin called him again to the castle. No doubt his wife was taken by the first pains of childbirth... Or maybe the bell announced another exceptional event... such as a monstrous pack, a distinguished hunter like him should eradicate, to ensure the safety of his land and people?

Faith in his lucky star and his heroic passion for hunting prevailed. Mustering his exhausted people, he embarked along the enigmatic trail.

As the day declined, the small band dislodged a pack of large gray wolves, that defended their offspring to the last. Yet the men's courage and tenacity eradicated the monsters. Contemplating the carnage of his arms, his ripped dogs and his exhausted pikemen, the lord heard again the bell call sound.

Then erupted from the thickets, the hugest wolf that ever trod his lands. The monstrous beast, streaked with black and white, disemboweled dogs with a few rants, slew the master ranger and fled under the foliage.

Carried by such ire and intoxicated by the hunt fever, the Hir mounted his horse and began pursuit, alone.

Through potholes and thickets, he long tracked down the monstrous animal, that deployed a thousand tricks to escape. Finally, at nightfall, the Hir managed to corner the beast at the bottom of a former quarry. He dismounted from his panting steed and grabbed his spears, approaching his huge panting prey.

But who was the hunter, who was the prey? The beast was facing him, ruffling his powerful loin and buttressed on his strong legs. Showing neither fatigue nor fear, it rolled red eyes burning with challenge.

Then again a call arose from the castle, distant, its tone veiled by these uncertain leagues that separate the world of women and home, from wilderness and wonders. The lord, feeling his destiny was about to be fulfilled, dismissed the call again.

Suddenly a doe appeared, tall and beautiful, suffused with a silver glow like a full moon. She came forward while still echoed the call of the wife, begging the Hir to assist in the event of birth. Or was it the white doe belling?

When the Hir came to his mind, the beast had disappeared. Frustrated for missing his great victory, his huntsman's anger turned towards the wonderful animal. He furiously charged the white doe!

Alas! The Fairy of the forest, for she was the doe, forgave neither his hunting fury nor his shortcomings towards his wife. She disappeared in a flash, and overwhelmed the Hir with a curse.

It is said that since that disastrous winter, a wandering pack roams from cottage to cottage, followed by a mounted ghost. When a newborn cries there, the sole rider lingers a while, in hope of being relieved from his curse, if only the young father would dare, some birth evening, open his home's door, to the wild rumors that beset men in the depths of winter."

.oOo.

_Finran found the tale edifying and well-turned, but when he objected with a smile, that there was little reason to fear the cold season, the keen eye of the livid miller alerted his interlocutor:_

\- "We should not laugh at tales. There is some truth in each of them. Since this time, every seven years, we have a very... stressful winter... when terrible things happen..."

Finran did not contradict the miller, but his incredulous look brought his guest to explain:

-"The elders will tell you that the worst season ever experienced was the Long Winter in fifty-eight2 ... - four abominable months...

That winter, something came lurking forward with the cold. A demon from the North extended its arms to strangle us with its icy fist... Wolves came in large numbers. Real monsters, vicious and cunning. At first they were heard, roaming around remote farms. The first time the wandering pack was seen, that was full moon, with on their heels a misty shade of a mounted huntsman...

You know, the herds are brought back from the plateau in winter. Stocks are herded into pens, beyond the Tharbad door, with their reinforced shelters. Well every night, they tried to force a fold to make a carnage. Often the nasty animals managed to enter... This ruined and famished many families...

Farmers and shepherds who came out to defend their flock were attacked - some were devoured. A large and well equipped party was needed to force them to flee.

By day, men tried to flush out the wolves that hid in the countryside. They tried to find their den to trap or kill them, but they could find nothing...

Every night, however, they returned and prevailed. Soon the surrounding farms were emptied - farmers who could no longer defend themselves, brought their families to the city, along with their food reserves, cows and barnyard.

But full moon nights were the most terrible. The mad beasts attacked the windows, digging galleries. Some fragile huts of the poorest, in the outer town, were attacked. Several families were decimated before help could reach them. All the old, women and children of the suburbs were finally repatriated within the walls of the city. Even the militia was struggling to defend - the carnivorous horde attacked anything living. In the end, the city was under siege.

And then the Long Winter retired and the wolves disappeared. When the earth thawed, Thalion counted its dead and finally was able to bury them. But the suffering was not over.

The wandering hunt was heard again, several times, leaving behind a morbid streak, a terrible disease, which transmitted from herds to people. The sick became livid and weakened, for the neck and joints folds were covered with dark pustules. Languor took the sick and those who cared for them. To stem the tide, it was necessary to burn houses and shelters, and clean the place... and sacrifice three quarters of flocks. During the year that followed, death mowed the lives of the weakest –the hurt, young or old - before Thalion could get back up..."

.oOo.

Since this awful winter, our town shuts away from the first snow. I know this till I was a kid. My mother tried to hide her fears, but I captured the frightened eyes of my elders when the wood echoed with ghostly cries of wolves and wandering hunters.

Then for several years, it calms down… Then suddenly evil resurfaces, a woman hears a race at dusk, and disturbing things happen, and people lose their minds...

Then Thalion organized itself: these winters, the fence is repaired and raised, sheep pens are barricaded, fires are kept lit at every door of the wall, guarded by two armed men, when stout at heart one can be found. Watchmen await at the windows of the most exposed farmhouses.

Still, fear and evil persist. In winter, when a misfortune happens at the wolf howl, we well know the cause...

These nasty wolves are heard, then seen, prowl around the city, they become cunning, snarling and... malicious. They force the barn of a farm, in a remote hamlet. They venture into the streets of the suburb, before the fence. The people become very cautious, but it is not enough... Last time two children disappeared. The driven big game that followed yielded nothing, but we lost a hunter, we found on the moor completely devoured after thaw!

The last time, two children disappeared. The great beating that followed yielded nothing, but we lost a hunter, we found on the moor, next spring, completely devoured! The elders are right: the wandering pack comes back as surely as the raven on the remains of the goat!

.oOo.

Finran remembers that evening very well, slowly spent to circumvent the sweating miller.

He had to take him back to his home, because since big guy did not walk very straight. On the threshold of his mill, they heard a scream in the distance, short as a warning. The miller had rushed inside, inviting Finran to stay for the night. The innkeeper had declined because he still had to inspect the wort in the brewery.

However, walking back to the Drunken Goose in humid gusts, Finran was happy he had taken his lantern and his rapier.

Since joining the village several years ago, the landlord has lived some difficult winters, but he had never before to face the wandering hunt... Yet occasionally some nights, the fleeing look of a storyteller at the inn, betrays his reluctance to tell about "the winter of the wolf", for fear to call the pack and its attendant horrors.

.oOo.

_To be followed…_

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Hir, hiri : prince, baron

2 That is the Long Winter of TA 2758-2759 (Shire Reckoning 1158-59), sadly famous, that famished Eriador (Year of Dearth).


	13. Winter of wolves- the beat of Thalion

**The winter of the wolves 2 – The beat of Thalion.**

At dawn this morning, which promise to be fine, the Inn-keeper musters Thalion's hunters, and organises a great beat. For several days, alarming news had been affecting his friends and neighbors' morale – a sheepfold broken into, decimated farmyards, strange hunting rumors in the deep woods, flocks dispersed to flight…

A former mercenary and captain of Thalion's militia, Finran has decided to attack evil at the root and lead his comrades to force the adversity. Nothing like a victorious tracking to banish the ghost of the "winter of the wolf"!

The beaters are posted at the edge of the furthest farm. As for the shooters, they are lain in ambush under the branches of a deep hedge over a long bank, far away north on the greenway. Between the two teams lies a wood, the beaters should empty of its predators and if possible of its game. Furthermore, a group equipped for big game tracking rests listening, waiting for the hunt master's signals.

.oOo.

A pale winter sun floods the immaculate valleys with brilliant light. In the dry pungent morning air, the dogs yelp joyously, hauling their master's sled on the glittering snow. The pack is panting at the swift rythm of the dominant bitch, hitched ahead.

Finran, the blond giant, has taken from his birth land, the northern marches of river Anduin, a trio of wolf-dogs, which ancestors, it was said in his family, had fought Urd's sled-hords. The miller's black mastiff, solid and stocky, had finally accepted the harness despite his bad temper. Last but not least, a small bastard bitch, swift and clever, a fine scent tracker with its snout in the wind, is running with the other dogs.

Master Finran has prepared everything. He sends the signal for the hunt's opening, launching an uproar on the line of the beaters, who step forward. The men's conquering and fierce cries invade the secret spaces of the woods. Their unexpected yapping, muffled by the snow-laden bushes' heavy silence, embolden the minds without calming their fears.

Riding his quick sled, Finran inspects the bank, from where the dislodged game is to be shot at. Exciting his dogs' fervor, he runs and pushes the harnessed team, enjoying the sunny breeze in this morning of men.

.oOo.

Placed atop a hill at the south-east of the wood, Finran observes the branches, heavily loaded with frost and hanging ice. As a rule of his thumb, the barely audible noise from the nearest beaters, place them half a league away from him. Further away, the vast arc of their ranks should close by the north-west, beating the game towards the greenway that runs northward.

In the course of hours, tawny and great-horn owls are fleeing the din with indignant cries. As the sun projects the first shadows of the indented crests on the South Downs, crows are gathering on the solitary trees' branches, waiting to scramble for the pickings.

Some hares in winter-livery rush from the woods. Finran must order the dogs to stay quiet – this small fry is not for today. Soon his young bitch, his prefered tracker, means to pursue them. The hunt master rebukes her severely – young dogs with fine snout must not get the habit to work on sight.

Then a change comes in the limpid air – furious barks sound far away, the muffled rumour of a mad rush inflates in the woody hills. The former mercenary makes peace inside, feeling the engagement coming. His breath appease and amplify, rejecting silver blasts in the icy air, while his blood beats irrigate his tempers and limbs with the vitality of his youth.

Suddenly the first big game appears out of the wood, leading his horde to cross the large space to the greenway. The frightened troop rushes to the east, straight to the trap.

Yet, two furlongs away from the bank, the large male suddenly stops, proudly raising his antlers, as a challenge to the poorly ambushed archers. The troop of the female and young anxiously regroup behind him, meanwhile several overweening brockets rush headlessly before the hunters. Arrows fly, breaking down their recklessness.

Taking advantage of this timely diversion, the stag rushes into a breach of the hedge, and tumbles two lancers to open a way out for his herd. The huntmaster observes his overwhelmed henchmen reforming their ranks and tending for their wounded, while the herd is escaping to the snowy downs.

Several panicked stinking beasts1, the hounds had driven out of their winter holes, are fleeing the invasion as well. The hunters have recommended not to attack these forest cleaners, but the peasants pitilessly shoot at these pests that visit and empty their farmyards.

Yet the huntmaster keeps a cool head and does not interfere. – the beat has still gathered enough meat for a month scarcity. Thus he lets the men release steam as exutory blows against their winter fears. He reserves himself since the icy wind murmurs the true test is still to come.

.oOo.

The horns have called for retreat. The men, satisfied with their victorious beat, gather their trophies and report to the huntmaster – a litter of wolf cubs was driven out in shame to the north. Several wounded men had been rescued and tended – most clumsily injured themselves during the hunt. And the last group of beaters, the northernmost, has surrounded some beast in a swale, at the bottom of a ravine, and had been holding it at bay for an hour. Spears and bows are being prepared, the dogs are held back, since the men think it is a big bear.

The huntmaster raises a worried brow and hurrily drives his hound pack toward the north. He knows the sad reputation of this ravine. Rhast his henchman calls it the "Dale of ever jail". This is where, several years ago, the gutted remains of some hunters, lost in the midst of a "winter of wolves" were found at spring...

.oOo.

In this late afternoon, a flight of ravens circles hovering in a dark sky above the Dale of ever jail. As Finran approaches the stone stele erected in memory of the victims of old, the dogs suddenly stop, disoriented and hair bristling. Floating out of the ravine in thin ashy curls, a foul smell rises the bile in his throat, recalling the filthy blandness of battlefields and the putrefaction of graves.

The huntmaster arrives too late. Wilderness has reclaimed its rights. Finran crosses the survivors of a massacre, shaggy, pale and dazed, barely able to support the wounded, rolling terrified eyes without answering his questions. Decimated dogs have fled through the copses - half of them will not be found alive. The few experienced hunters who have fought in the fray, tell strange and discordant reports, speaking of a wild charge, vicious black beasts2, others evoking a giant deer. Rhâst himself, nicked at his groin and his head spinning, can barely describe what he saw - a beast, he says, brutally launched its pack on the novices, gutting and trampling the poor devils in the muddy wallows.

The confusing traces reveal to perplexed Finran, the presence of several animals that do not normally coexist. But the huntsman has never encountered such a mischief, a trick so deadly to men. He is shaken, especially since the thickets reveal carnivore droppings and traces that only Cubs could let around their lair...

.oOo.

Finran reads terror and doubt in the attitudes and actions of his men. Even his lieutenants avoid his looks, overcome by the horror of the dale. The winter of the wolf seems to have imposed its immemorial law...

He has made his decision. Soberly, with the assurance of a mercenary that no retreat could defeat, he gathers dried meat reserves, piles furs and oilcloth on his sled, and attaches some hunting spears and javelins.

Finran orders to take the wounded and the dead before the night closes on the tomb of the cursed valley. His lieutenants agree while looking down - this is a task at hand for them.

Then the blond giant goes a-hunting, alone with his dogs.

The master of winter sent him a challenge, he will face at whatever cost.

.oOo.

To be followed…

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 In hunting, the name "stinking beast" means almost all mustelids: weasels, martens, badgers, stoats, otters, ferrets, polecats.

2 In hunting, the « black beast » means the boar. Naturally it is rather an adult boar, and not the young, which livery is striped.


	14. Winter of wolves- the long chase

**The winter of wolves Part 3 – The long chase.**

.oOo.

The sleigh slides on a heavy, gray snow in the waning day. The hunter, his eyes fixed on his trail, heaves to the rhythm of his skate steps, easing the effort of the harnessed dogs. The mingled raspy breaths of mastiffs and master, flow as thin white scrolls, signs of an obstinate and ardent life, the dry air instantly dissolves in cold mineral silence. The swift and repetitive rhythm carries the thoughts of the huntsman in a fleeting half-consciousness.

Finran likes to let go in the thrill of the race, letting the hunter's will blend into the pack's instinct. The big game recalls his soul as a young man, lord among the warriors of his clan. In the high valleys of Anduin, the Eothraim then measured the man's value, with the number of his war victories as well as the prowess of his pack. At that time, his father commanded a free nation, who fought the orcs Gundabad, living on raising goats and hunting.

The distant memory of his first battles returns floats in Finran's fluid consciousness - the incredible influx of vitality irrigating all his being with exhilaration and hope, when victory sublimates combat rage and terror in the clash of arms. He sees himself back as a boy, proudly reaching the target for the first time in a pine glade, in a morning of eternity on the northern roof of the world. Therefore his silver arrow meets its mark every time, provided he saves it for the right time.

The immanent danger also floats, the slow defeat of his kin, driven from village to village, the grieving of his relatives and repressed tears in the eyes of the warrior widows. Danger did not defeat them; the end came when hope waned.

That is why Finran has shaken the fearful winter torpor of his friends in Thalion, his new family, his new people. But he seems he has failed again. His prestige as a captain has led them to brave their fear, to face the winter of the wolf, but the beast has crushed their pitiful rebellion and cast terror into their hearts. The beast... or whatever he is now tracking, since he dares not guess which creature has left traces of such gigantic hooves...

The snow begins to fall as darkness grows, sowing its veil of doubt on their track, and numbness in their hearts. The dogs certainly feel the drop of their master's will. The pack slows down, pulling Finran from his dark thoughts.

The night coming neigh, he cannot find a place to make a fire. He sets up the two tents in a hurry and shelters his pack, that curls up after some bickering of precedence.

.oOo.

Dawn calls for effort without bringing hope. Low anthracite clouds spread their smoothly coated malice on the downs, freezing the hills in icy stupor.

The hunter probes the horizon and sniffs the flakes still falling around: the day before, he had launched his horses toward the west, stalking his prey three leagues along, before being forced off. Now, although his innate sense of direction whispers where the track was heading to yesterday, the hunter may not cast his dogs on the trail, hidden under a considerable snow depth.

The huntsman, without conviction, then packs up his equipment. He sets up the hitch, but saves the bitch, he leads before him on her leash, just in case, to the west. After a mile, the flakes are scarce and Finran sees again some bushes, their bare branches dart from under a small layer of snow. By some miracle, the storm seems to have been fierce just on the eminence where he spent the night...

Still persisting, the hunter has the dog work in a wide valley, in order to regain the lost track. The brave animal finds several, much to the confusion of her master, who must put her back on the hunt after recognizing the footprint of a lone wolf.

After two hours of research with conflicting and confusing results, the huntsman admits defeat. With rage in his heart, he harnesses the bitch with the packs, and launches his sleigh to the south and Thalion.

.oOo.

As the hunter climbs a dreary slope in order to angle at the top, suddenly dogs swerve and station themselves at a standstill, except for the mastiff which already wants to rush.

A plain opens to the west, bathed by a surreal glow under the dark cloudy canopy. There a large deer raises its majestic antlers. The huntsman has difficulty in assessing its age, the powerful black silhouette shivering like a mirage on the pristine slope. The dark forest giant seems to defy the bewildered hunter.

Here is the bloodthirsty beast with gigantic hooves! Victory still lies within reach!

Finran launches the hitch with a dry order.

The team quickly approaches his game, which proudly gazes at them, motionless under the cloudy sky rolling its dark threats. The vast breadth of the beast slowly reveals to the subdued hunter, amazed by the small scale of the animal's antlers. Finran avidly observes the powerful anatomy of his opponent. The antlers seem built to cut and kill, their narrowness must give the animal a high mobility in the undergrowth. Its strong and dark legs nervously scratch the snow like an aurochs of Rhûn, ready for charging. The challenging posture surprises the hunter, who, taken in doubt, slows his pace and looks around. When he unhitches his pack and launches it at full speed, less than a furlong away from the beast, it takes flight with a leap while the dogs snarlingly yap, sensing the kill.

But the enthusiasm of the hunter is short. The vigorous beast outruns the unleashed pack with supernatural ease, forcing Finran to collect his dogs and re-harness to pursue it.

The hunt will be long, but time works in favor of the hunter, who knows that the number of pursuers ordinary proves a decisive advantage.

Finran leads his pack along the fresh tracks, saving the force of his dogs and anticipating some turns of the beast, sometimes pushing westward, sometimes northward. In the maze of the downs, the hunters pursue strange rumors, their game's track alongside other traces, sometimes heavy droppings the huntsman cannot identify. At the bare summits spiked with chalky rocks, the manners of the beast confuse the hunting, pushing it to speed up, feigning the slips of tired games. Twice in the bottom of valleys filled with snow, the beast comes back on itself, its track repeating strangely at the crossroads of ancient and garbled ways1.

The winter sun makes a brief appearance at its zenith, as the trackers reach a gentle wooded slope descending before them. At the bottom of the valley, a wood protects a rapid river which bed, deeply trenched, runs westward to meet the Brandywine. Again the dogs give voice. When Finran unties them, all burst forward.

But the beast may not be so easily cornered. One jump is enough for him to cross the river. It passes like a shadow of fear, hung with pale golden rays that pierce above the icy riverbed.

Finran admires the aerial grace of the dark colossus, that lingers on the opposite bank to brave him a few moments, before resuming its light running to the north. Recovered from his shock, the huntsman gathers his frantic dogs, and without risking to cross it, slides along the river, cursing his opponent.

At nightfall, finally, the hunter finds an upstream passage and beat the thickets on the presumed path of his game, north of its crossing.

The track stretches before him, clear and yet troubled by strange counter-ways. But Finran must resolve to set up camp. He distributes their food to the dogs, ensuring that the pack leader receives her due first.

All night long, during the light sleep of the huntsman, many thoughts confront in his mind - his passion for hunting, his vital need to conquer and his fearful wonder at the beast, this brute force from the forests, which has decimated its assailants and so far beaten his pursuit.

.oOo.

La neige a cessé de tomber des cieux embrumés lorsque la traque reprend à l'aube, au long d'une piste ténue. Finran doit bientôt faire travailler sa lice en avant de la meute. De plateaux désolés en halliers encombrés de congères, l'équipage chemine lentement, vers l'ouest et le nord.

The snow has stopped falling from the misty skies when the hunt resumes at dawn, along a thin track. Soon Finran must have his bitch work ahead of the pack. From desolate plateaus to thickets crowded with snowdrifts, the team slowly travels westward and northward.

As the bitch appears to have diverted to other routes, again the hunter gains height and again sees the great deer, his threatening hieratic figure defying him at the edge of a bare wood. Does the beast begins to feel tired, to linger this way after two days of pursuit?

Finran launches his team at the bottom of a ravine, to approach the game without being seen. When ordered to leave it, the crew gives a furious jerk. But the mastiff collapses with a shrill yelp, paralyzing the sled.

Le chasseur remet de l'ordre dans la meute et examine l'énorme dogue qui geint doucement, couché sur le côté dans la neige. Le mâtin souffre d'un allongement du postérieur, incapable de courir.

The hunter puts his pack back in order and examines the enormous dog that whines softly, lying on his side in the snow. The mastiff is suffering from a lengthening of the posterior, and is unable to run.

Finran swears under his breath. In the remote valleys of the Gray Mountains, poor dogs, injured at full speed, were sacrificed, especially during a ritual hunt. But the huntsman no longer feels the heart to abandon a companion which faithfully served him, and by the way does not belong to him. He has already caused enough deaths during this hunt.

Finran makes an inventory of his equipment: besides salt meat, biscuits, salt and water, they transport tents, blankets, utensils and some hunting weapons - spears, arrows and daggers. Food being scarce, he cannot feed his team if hunting remains vain.

The huntsman heals the mastiff and, with rage in his heart, leaves with the bitch. Long they hunt the hare and Finran must correct his bloodhound, who gets distracted by seeing squirrels dig their hiding places. In hare coursing, a-views are pernicious for young dogs, because they are getting used to searching with their eyes rather than their nose. Hours later, the hunter shot a couple of white hares he distributes to his pack.

.oOo.

But Finran has also established a comprehensive plan of big game ways around. And he feels more troubled and worried than ever. Ways of wolves and other animals co-exist, that should not even cross. And again he saw some traces of the beast's monstrous hooves.

So far his pride, his town's honor and his hunter's instinct pushed him forward. Now he feels, he knows that a monster, a powerful animal from the legendary depths of the old forest, cast a curse against men, and against him in particular.

Deep inside, the seasoned hunter whispers to give up and come back in great numbers to trap the beast. But the warrior he still is, knows that dispelling the shadow of fear must be accomplished promptly. Finran resolves to pursue the beast and slay it if he can.

He loads the ailing mastiff on his sleigh, and resumes his hunt, determined to flush out the beast.

.oOo.

Therefore Finran follows dark tracks, interspersed with cunning traps, constantly get him close to the disturbing shadow of the old forest. The team soon feels the influence of its spells.

A path steeply leads them to the midst of a frozen pool, which gives way under their weight. Finran saves his pack but he loses some of his equipment.

Lorsqu'il tente de prendre son chemin, ce dernier semble avoir disparu…

When he attempts to make his way, the latter seems to have disappeared ...

Further away, the dogs at bay are driven into a deep lair, they exit defeated but covered with parasites and painful thorns. The hunter must stop again, for hours of care and a new cold night.

The next day, the tracks still prove as confusing, but all day monstrous hooves' prints spur Finran.

As the twilight thickens ghostly shadows, snow starts to fall again. But the poor trees surrounding the camp are not covered. All night long, their black branches whisper in the wind, the malicious chant of trees disturbed in their winter slumber.

.oOo.

Finran, despite his exhaustion, at first cannot get to sleep, under his makeshift shelter. Finally, an hour before dawn, he sinks into a strange dream.

_His shelter has turned into a cabin._

_His four-legged friends are gone, perhaps relegated to the threshold._

_But Finran cannot sleep because the bed is occupied by a woman._

_She bears the determined traits of Aleth, the baker of Thalion, plump and talkative widow, who shares many nights with the landlord._

_Then Finran discovers why he cannot join Aleth: she is right in childbirth!_

_Finran helps his best, vaguely touched by this hypothetical sudden fatherhood._

_But through the small wooden windows, hunting scenes can be seen, and hounds and horns are heard around the cabin._

_Suddenly a powerful fist knocks on the door of the hovel._

_The opening door reveals the face of Finran's father, imploring the aid of the young father to find rest._

_Should he abandon the child for the curse of the wandering hunt to finally stop?_

Finran wakes with a start.

Usually he does not dream - at least, he does not remember his dreams. Never had he felt the evocative power of what he has just seen. Thus these disjointed thoughts are binding upon him like a truth. But he still has to decode them...

Should he sacrifice himself to save Thalion? His father had sacrificed for their people to escape to Eriador. Finran doesn't possess anything from them, except the silver arrow, the arrow with which he learned to shoot. Would his fate be to follow his example?

Or does the dream require him to get back to Thalion, like the Hir of the tale?

Stubborn as ever, Finran resolves to continue hunting ...

.oOo.

_To be followed..._

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 Track of a pursued animal, followed thanks to dogs' olfaction.


	15. Winter of wolves- the beast

**The winter of wolves Part Part 4 – The black beast.**

.oOo.

Finran represses his enigmatic dreams and follows his huntsman instinct, sometimes his dogs exciting to hurry, sometimes stopping them to consider strides1 on the track. Now his team is winding through thick, squat and gnarled trees, huddling like naked old men shivering in the cold of winter. Here some vigorous conifers head up through dry snow drifts, there dozens of slender hazel arms, bent over mossy stumps, sadly whistle in the wind.

The muffled silence of the vegetal sleep falls, while Finran doubtfully examines the traces2 left by his game on the trees. The team keeps on the track, ever onward towards the heart of the old forest. The snow now seems scarcer, and sometimes the sled must turn around long strips of bare earth and wet leaves. The speed3 of the beast seems not to slow, neither in open spaces, nor in the deepest thickets.

.oOo.

Yet after a few hours, at the bottom of a short ravine, half full of blue ice, the traces of the beast seemed to hesitate, then change direction, and go back on its track repeatedly. Seasoned and attentive, the huntsman is not fooled by such distressed game tricks. The hunter knows that these tricks must have greatly delayed his game. But Finran wonders why the beast tries them now, whereas she taunted him repeatedly.

The hunter pushes the dogs until nightfall, since he is certain, by the look of the beast's strides, it is slowing down and tacking more. Finran thinks the monster, driven to its lair as he has never been, is reluctant to reveal it as his ultimate lodging.

Then the chiaroscuro of a gap in the bushes, reveals to him a herd of deers, accompanied by their last spring's fawns, a furlong away on his left. The huntsman orders silence to his dogs and approaches, notching his silver arrow. Finran aims at the strongest female, when the gigantic beast suddenly burst before him, giving warning to the deers, that flee into the woods.

Now the beast intervenes to protect his herd... Finran has finally discovered the weak point of his opponent.

.oOo.

In a few strides, Finran joins a hollow stump full of wet leaves. He takes a strong support on it and carefully aims at the beast, breathing deeply and smoothly.

To his surprise, the animal does not run away.

Its hoarse breathing exhales long hot steam sprays, that vanish on the glittering snow before him. The animal carefully scrutinizes the shooter, stopped as if to leap forward, while the deer's cavalcade is fading behind him. Then, with its head lifted up, its nostrils quivering, the great dark stag keeps the attention of the hunter. Some sixty cubits4 away, the eighteen antlers seems slender as a steed of old, powerful as a Rhûn's aurochs and flexible as a mouflon from the Grey Mountains. Its horns, branched in deadly daggers, strangely confines to a cubit on either side of the fierce head. The sparkling drips5 and golden eyes of the beast throw challenging lightning, to which however Finran does not still respond, fascinated by the noble and courageous bearing of his opponent.

Finran arme sa flèche plus avant.

The beast lowers its antlers, his hoof scraping the snow.

Finran draws his arrow further.

For a brief moment, in the flash of an eye, are superimposed on the present, these blessed moments of learning, under the niggling rule of the grandfather. Then the teacher, satisfied with his student perseverance and address, gives him the silver arrow, precious among all, forged by the dwarves, taken by his ancestors in the treasure of Scatha the dragonness. It never broke, he always found it. In hunting, it goes straight to the aim, provided he performs a perfect approach. The silver arrow kills then quickly, without unnecessary suffering, the game that the hunter respects.

However a mishap troubles his mind, a detail his captivated intellect slowly points at: at the end of the powerful legs, the beast's hooves appear thin and flexible, unlike the gigantic traces the pack has followed so far.

The beast slowly turns still staring Finran with its fiery gaze. The hunter hesitates. What kind of victory would that be, on a willing opponent, that showed the courage of the father of its herd? He relaxes and disarms his silver arrow.

But then come back to his mind, his decimated men, his friends down, and the terror of his kin.

Too late.

The big black deer has lunged at small stride in the brambles, when the hunter has come to his senses, under the astonished gaze of his dogs.

.oOo.

Finran insults himself and pushes his bitch back to work.

After an hour, it sniffs so well in the gray night, that she finds the beast's trail, that a few strides confirm by the light of the full moon.

But are these the strides of his game?

Soon the bitch sniffs a scent, quite close. Within moments she finds many steps, but of wild boar! Finran has only time to stop the team and recall his bloodhound, and suddenly a herd of black beasts burst in his direction from the bushes.

The evil beast has diverted the hunter on some dangerous game!

The group of boars sweeps on the team. Finran grabs a pike and defends his dogs, screaming imprecations to scare the intruder. Within seconds, the herd is gone, the sled upside-down with the bandaged mastiff. A big male has disjointed the dominant dog, which bowels has spread on the snow.

The poor beast lies on his side, moaning piteously. Guilt embraces the heart of the hunter as he gazes helplessly the agony of his pack leader. To tears, Finran remembers the moments of complicity, serenity and success with this good companion, he has weaned himself.

Then, simply, with rage at heart but unabated, he assist her to leave this world without more pain.

After several minutes of stupor, Finran digs the snow and ground as he may, and buries the beloved remains. After a brief thought to Bema, he stands up, a death flash in his eyes, and goes back a-hunting, cursing the beast to the lethal silver of his precious arrow.

.oOo.

Finran unhitches all dogs and even disbands the mastiff, which can at least defend itselves and escape if necessary. But the determination of their vengeful master inspire his dogs, that foresee the kill.

The bitch is put to work again, followed by the other dogs a few yards away. The strides of the beast can be read like the pages of a book, through thickets and frozen streams under the cold light of the moon, that sometimes pierces the dark cover.

Finally the group reaches the top of a dark ravine, overlooking a valley of brambles and low trees. The star of the night makes a brief appearance, grimacing icy threats as a faint hunting with hounds rumor is running through the air.

Has Finran dreamed these strange noises, these pack howls, this ride and the horn echoes through the valley?

Sweating under the spectral halo of the moon, the huntsman probes his dogs: the pack roars and shudders, its hair bristling. His instinct is not mistaken: the heart of winter, the source of Thalion's fears is wallowing in the lair at the bottom of this ravine.

Leaving the sledge at the summit, the group descends cautiously near the frozen bed of a stream, and penetrates under the brambles. It's warmer under the canopy of snow that covers the low vegetation like a shroud. An oppressive darkness reigns over this under-world, barely lighted by some unreal halos from holes in the snow canopy.

Finran lights a torch, and the group advances slowly. A smell of peat rises from the leaves carpet, corrupt by uncertain hints. The semi-circle range, the hunters had spontaneously adopted, gradually reduces to a tight group of shaggy dogs around the man, who must often hack the intertwined branches with his rapier.

Suddenly the dogs growl dully. Finran sees a pair of evil eyes glowing for a second, at the edge of of his torch's reach. Immediately, the huntsman plants his torch on a mound and calls his dogs around him.

His maneuver saves their lives. Wild screams rise around them, whereas a huge black wolf advance his disgusting maw oozing with thick slime.

The monster does not have time to launch its call for the kill: an arrow throws a deadly shine through his throat. The leading wolf collapses. His rival, a large male with silver coat, throws himself on the remains, still animated by upheavals, and devours its entrails, thus taking possession of both the vital energy of the fallen leader, and the command of the undecided pack.

But the new king doesn't benefit from his throne. The moment his bloody mouth is lifting from the carnage, the victorious flame burning at the bottom of its orbit goes off abruptly, cut short by a new projectile.

Finran calmly takes advantage at the stupor of the pack, shooting coolly a reckless wolf that had exposed himself too much.

Then the pack disbands. The archer, after his double feat, spends yet some arrows. His victory would be total if his dogs, feeling fear in the enemy ranks, were not launching in pursuit of the wild beasts. Finran has great difficulty recall them, and is forced to rescue them with his hunting spear, when one of them faces with a vicious dark wolf.

Silence finally settles. The decimated pack has fled without leader. Three males and a female lie on the ground, and no more than four individuals, probably female, have fled. Finran heals the wounds of his exhausted dogs and affords some time to recover. But curious abrasions inflicted at the foot of the shrubs arouse his curiosity6.

He explores the surroundings, finishes off the dying wolves and discovers the den of the pack. He ruthlessly exterminates the cubs. Then he cuts up without delay the remains of the two most impressive beasts. Returning to his dogs, Finran, staring into space, cleans his bloody dagger in the snow and casts the purifying ritual.

He has exacted the terrible revenge of the northern men in the name of his whole kin, who were overwhelmed by the terror of the wolf. The henchmen of the beast are routed. Tomorrow he will force its lair and bring its remains!

.oOo.

On a broad space, Finran clears the snow from the brambles in order to breathe fresh air. Taking a risk, he goes and get his sleigh alone. Then he lights a fire as best he can with the available dead wood. After a frugal meal, he sinks into the soldiers' sleep - immediate, deep and refreshing.

Slowly into the night, as the moon passes through the silent sky, a drizzle fills the valley, which in Buckland is called sleep vapor, and had indeed got the dogs sound asleep.

Yet a rustling awakens Finran before dawn. No doubt his hatred for the beast is the strongest. Under the canopy of snow, muffled sounds reach him, grunts and mumbles fuse in the icy mist.

He calls his dogs, unsuccessfully. He fuels the fire and lights a reluctant torch. His bow can be of no help in this foggy night, the hunter takes his spears, and heads at a guess in the mist. His light torch at arm's length, Finran advances under the thicket, like a blind man trusting only his ear.

Long, the man strides, with some hurried footsteps in the snow and frozen mud, then trying to calm his panting and listening to the grunts moving away. It seems to him that his game, whatever it is, follows a complicated path, turning frequently when the hunter is coming by. After a time difficult to assess, Finran finally realizes that he is getting lost and thinks to turn back.

But suddenly he comes across a stride, fresh and huge. The hunter examines it carefully. A large pinch7 is accompanied by a mark of guard, distant and perpendicular. Puzzled, the huntsman remembers the many paths crossed in recent days, whereh strangely coexisted footprints of several species. This one is rounded, large and firm. Could he have confused ths stride of a deer and a boar? Or would this be the trace of the forest's perverted offspring from another age?

Finran wants to find out for sure; he follows the steps with caution.

Walking through the sleep vapor as a ghost in pursuit of a rumor, the hunter perseveres, orienting with the grunts on which he gains slowly, while the gray dawn is rising and the mist is warming up.

Finally Finran reaches the bank of a small river, frozen in an ice with water iris reflections. The milky color of the bank gradually gives way to dull blue and green transparencies down to the middle of the riverbed, where can be seen the undulations of long black and silver algae, under thin clear ice. Several willows, on the opposite bank, let their melancholy branches lurking in the mist. The thought comes to the hunter, that this river, probably the Withywindle, must be a pleasant place in spring.

But there it is, where awaits a nice sized boar, hidden under the roots of an upturned stump on the edge of the wood. When the hunter has walked near the shore, in the open space, the black beast comes out of hiding and rushes behind him.

The boar charges the intruder with all its might. But its proud impatience betrays him - a small grunt of evil resentment comes out of it, and warns the hunter, whose only resource is a dangerous landing fall, to avoid the lethal charge.

Incidentally, the beast breaks the shaft of one of the spears, narrowly missing him with his groin. On the ground, Finran would be in a very bad position, if the momentum of the animal would not allow him to stand up and brandish a stake.

The boar is powerful and frightening, stubborn and fierce. With its huge size, it nevertheless seems young, based on its peculiar way to charge and lash the air towards the man's legs, trying to throw him to the ground. The fight is long and demanding, the hunter multiplying his feints and holding his moves to reduce his risks. Finally Finran's experience prevails: taking advantage of the boar's reckless charging, he manages to thrust his pike, precisely at the heart. The beast collapses heavily, shattering the weapon under itself.

The huntsman approaches, his dagger in his hand, whereas his victim, hardly shaken with spasms, is spreading some black blood with pungent smoke. Finran finishes off his game, watching the gray-black fur, which keeps in places some red highlights of a young boar's pelt. The hunter frowns: despite the large size of the animal, it is but a pig8! Weary and exhausted, the hunter checks his anterior legs - much thinner than the mysterious strides...

The man, out of breath and full of doubt, is raising when his gaze meets a pair of eyes, cut off in the shadows of the forest, about twenty yards from the river shore.

Bloodshot and bulging eyes, dart on the man a swiny look of hatred and a pledge of death. The filthy jowl with venomous thrills advances, studded with ivory swords. Its hysterical and deafening roar vomits the visceral loathing towards the biped, whereas vile defiled stench of stale are spreading. The monstrous incarnation of the original forest depths, of the fanatic digging in the muddy wallow, of the great primordial and wild rutting, has risen to challenge the supremacy of mankind.

The dead pig, yet of exceptional build, was therefore only the complacent and reckless page9 of the brambles' sovereign. The true black beast, accomplice of the carnage on Thalion's pikemen, is finally taken out of its den...

The tremendous muscle mass undulates under the dark pelt as the beast advances, sometimes shivering with murderous rage spasms.

The beast has come out of the wood, but the hunter, lucid, knows he cannot deal with it. Thus the great stag knowingly brought him here, for him to undergo the ancient law of the forest...

.oOo.

Yet Finran grasps his last spade and faces the monster.

The old mâle takes advantage of his page's error; it immediately comes in contact with its tired prey and overwhelms it with tusk strokes. The monster has two pairs. The first takes the form of one foot long swords, wielded over the brawn. The second, are wounded on the sides of the jowl.

The boar shakes his black and gray coat, its huge size enabling it to fend towards the chest of his opponent, constantly forced to retreat. Finran's extension, with his spear, hardly allows him to hold off the foul jowl, hitting the brawn without hacking it.

Huge but surprisingly agile, the beast quickly takes the ascendancy over the man and drives him to the icy bank. Finran tires quickly, the tusks have already slashed him on the shoulder and forearm. Then the huntsman must risk all for all. Anticipating a frenzied reel, he hits aside, wielding his pike with one hand.

The hunter immediately pays his imprudence: in a loud bellow, the monster lacerates his arm with the back of its brawn and throws him to the ground!

But he dealt his blow! The stake has remained stuck in the eye of the monster that jumps up in pain and rage.

Instinctively Finran crawls a little further and gets up, painfully holding his broken and bloodied right arm.

Panting and nearly fainting, the hunter anxiously contemplates the beast's efforts to get rid of the weapon. Finran still cherishes the hope that the monster, overcome by grief, would abandon the field. He holds his last weapon in his left hand, his faithful but short dagger.

Finally, amid venomous pain belchings, the spear is snatched in a spray of dark blood. For a few more moments, the animal staggers, seeking his prey with a clumsy frenzy.

Finran backs gently, noiseless. But the beast sees with its one eye.

Trembling with rage, the beast walks towards his virtually defenseless prey and pushes a defiant roar, which sounds echoing long on the banks in the old forest. Within a few bloody strides, it is galloping.

The hunter, in a heartbeat, embraces the whole breadth of his years, his intoxicating youth withered by grief, his maturity sprinkled with vain victories and sustainable cowardice, and redemption in a new life. Some female faces dance one last medley, sending him in turns the tender grin of regret and the serene compassionate smile, just before impact.

Finran expires at the sound of ground flesh.

When his gaze returns to this world, he sees, with a clear acuity, a large stag oust the blind side of the beast, in a slow but irresistible pressure ripping the filthy dark pelt. The crushed ribs are those of the huge boar, torn by the antlers of the deer!

The monster, disjointed and unbalanced, swerves onto the ice of the river. In a crash, the thin layer at the center of the stream breaks, precipitating the huge mass in icy-cold running water.

La puanteur du grand sanglier s'évanouit dans un bouillonnement de cristal. Comme se lève cette chape de relents, Finran croit que la berge s'éclaire d'une douce lueur. Le grand cerf, à présent fauve et doré sous la clarté salvatrice, et l'homme, au bras ensanglanté, se contemplent dans un noble regard de paix. Le chasseur sait désormais que le coureur sacré de Bema, le dieu veneur de son peuple, n'a pas quitté les Terres du Milieu.

The stench of the great boar vanishes in a crystal bubbling. As this screed of reek vanishes, Finran believes the bank is lighting up with a soft glow. The great deer, now fawn and golden under the saving clarity, and the man, with his bloodied arm, stare at each other in a noble peaceful look.

The hunter now knows that Bema's sacred runner, the huntsman god of his people, has not left Middle-earth yet.

.oOo.

But suddenly the frozen river cracks again. The horrible jowl springs back, with vile pig cries, as the wild boar is trying to climb and regain balance on the ice. Behind him, his powerful hind legs seem to struggle in a dark and silver tangle of weed, which attract it to the bottom.

Finran screams his refusal. In an instant, he grabs his bloodied spear with his able arm and ventures on the ice to meet the monster.

Ruthless, the hunter slays strikes again and again at the boar's head, which eventually let go and sinks in the dark blue and green swirls of the Withywindle.

.oOo.

Finran long inspires, deeply. The lighter air seems to dissolve the weight that was grasping his heart. Exhausted but serene, the prostrate hunter lays down near the bank, and closes his eyes for a moment.

Yet he knows that this relaxation will cost him his life...

.oOo.

When he wakes up from his dream, his head is spinning. A large deer is walking away on the opposite shore, disappearing into the mists with the sound of curious bells, that sow strange "Derry Dol, Ding a-ling Merry lol " in the sparkling air.

As the majestic beast is leaving the scene, a peculiar little rhyme comes to his mind, like the recollection of a dream or an old memory:

_Stooge Beaucent10 has gone out_

_At Hays-end to mow some wheat _

_Mending assignment to meet _

_All damage made by his snout!_

_For dinner he is retained_

_By Withywindle the mermaid _

_For many years or hundred _

_The rose garden prunes One-eyed!_

.oOo.

Finran cannot explain how his arm was washed, mended and bandaged, nor by what miracle his dogs could harness to the sled and come down to him. But at the edge of the Old Forest, one should be surprised at nothing and have better go his own way.

Pink dawn prompts to departure. However, before leaving, he still has a duty to perform.

The hunter drags the valiant fallen pig for his master and hangs it by the hind legs, at the branches of a solid ash. He bleeds it out, empties it and castrates it.

Finran solemnly distributes offals to his waggling pack. The hungry dogs, even the mastiff, pounce on them barking happily, while the hunter buries the bowels.

Finally the servant of Bema sets a ritual fire. There he roasts the liver and frivolities11, seasoned with secret herbs. After a short meditation, he eats them slowly, assimilating every bite. Finran accepts a share of the beast's power, ravished from the primitive world to appropriate his courage. Thus the hunt leader strengthens his sturdy soul to the dangerous source of wilderness, to avoid his kin to be confronted with it.

Then he looks up toward the east. Black branches glow with a thousand starred smiles in the rising light. The thaw has begun.

.oOo.

From now on, at the sign of the drunken goose, it will be risked telling the terrible stories of the winter of the wolves. Hassle and hazards of winter may not be avoided, but fear might be somehow better exorcised.

.oOo.

**NOTES**

0 - This story is inspired by real hunting episodes, but transposed to imaginary creatures of Middle Earth. Unlike our world, wolves are more or less evil creatures, which attack humans, and wild boars can rise to gigantic sizes, when an evil spirit leads them.

Moreover, I was inspired by the next job: Fabre-Vassas Claudine. Le partage du ferum. Un rite de chasse au sanglier. In: _Études rurales_, N°87-88, 1982. La chasse et la cueillette aujourd'hui. pp. 377-400.

1 Footprints of a game.

2 Damages made by a fleeing animal, to trees and branches.

3 The speed and firmness of the game's trajectory can be deduced from its prints.

4 Length unit : a foot and a half, around 45 cm.

5 The eyes of the deer possess, at their inner corner, a kind of slut, the drip, from which oozes an unctuous liquid, offensive, particularly abundant during the mating season.

6 The abrasions are left by young wolves around the place they grow up.

7 The two central fingers of the wild boar lean against the ground are called the "pinches". The atrophied fingers situated behind and above the pinches are "the guards".

8 A boar of 1 or 2 years old is name a « Pig of the sounder »

9 Company animal, usually a two or three years old male, a lonely old solitary takes with him, probably to sacrifice it if it is distressed.

10 Beaucent is the name of the wild boar in the Roman de Renart

11 In Languedoc, the game's testicles are still named « frivolities ».


	16. The little prince of the bakehouse

**The little prince of the bakehouse**

.oOo.

_At Thalion Castle..._

The petty boy sneaks stealthily between flour sacks, oil jars and saltings barrels, struggling under the weight of his loot. Under the arches of red brick, that exhale fresh yeast fragrance, the baker removes steaming loaves from the oven and places them in large baskets. While the stout woman shoves again heavy white balls, the boy approaches the stove and plays with firebrands, mimicking fabulous spells.

\- "I saw you, Ostomir! Do not play near the stove! The other time did not tell you enough?" The matron says quietly, continuing her work with detachment.

Her son believes her somehow a fairy. The tender maid, down from the hills of Dunland, knows secret rituals - beer never gets spoiled and golden loaves gather between her soft expert hands. The storm is her friend and she has got eyes in her back!

Annoyed, the boy gingerly sits down, putting his huge ledger open on the oaken table, stained with wheat flour. The furnaces glow in the dark bakery, animating the illuminations of the ancient tome, with an ardent epic life.

\- "Where did you take this book again? You know you must not disturb the visitors! "

The woman's quiet voice startles the child as she's filling the oven, wielding her long pallet effortlessly with a slow and weary gesture. The petty blond scowls at her, with an adorable guilty look of his:

\- "I took the wizard's ledger in the library! This is the one we read with my dad! Would you read it to me, pleeease? "

Despite this charming and imploring grimace, the pale eyes of the baker fog up with sadness. The shovel joins the wall with a tired and resigned gesture

\- "I cannot read, my little prince! But still I shall tell you a story... "

From the glossy buffet, a pitcher of milk and a golden brioche emerge, just like magic. The mother recites a story, embroidered a thousand times over the illuminations. The glory of the King, his wild romantic passion, his terrible forbidden love take shape under the eyes of little Ostomir, until this brief and wondrous era of felicity when, withdrawn into a hunting lodge, she gave birth to her little prince...

This is not the story of the wizards' grimoire, Ostomir knows that. But this is the story of his mom and his dad, they alone will ever know. For the sweet mother lacks the strength to reveal its sad end... Ostomir comforts his mother and scolds:

\- "When I grow up, I shall be a magician. And then beware, you visitors..."

The lonely wench tenderly runs her hand through the diaphanous hair of her son:

\- "Now I want you to put this book back. You must promise me not to meddle with visitors!

\- You know, usually they do not even pay attention to me...

\- We are no longer anything for them, just shadows that populate their kitchens! Never give them the opportunity to hurt you!"

Ostomir agrees, to please his mother. But how could he leave the books, blazing witness of his dear father's glory, at the hands of these ignorant visitors who usurp his castle?

.oOo.

_In the attic of the sign of the Drunken Goose..._

A pale and slender girl is lying on a bale of wheat, under the eaves, the cat in her lap. Leaning on her skinny ribs, a large leather book spreads under her hungry gaze. Firmly clutching the venerable tome, she flies from line to line, picking a gallant pirouette here, there a dazzling image.

Under the window, avaricious with light, the girl of a hunting haggard breath, corner mouth, the rebellious lock which bars her ardent face, enlightened by reading. Diving in the lay of Eärendil and Elwing, she quenches her heroic thirst with limpid verses of Elven stanzas.

\- "Give me back my book!"

She is immersed in a critical page. Her steel spirit parries, alongside her hero, the treacherous blows of the northern islands' Hydra. You can imagine this is not the time to drop the story.

\- "Give me back my book!"

An irritated eyebrow rises above the vellum. The faded eye deshirred and grows afraid. The cat wakes up, bristles its coat and flees spitting. The ledger swiftly lowers.

Bare feet in the attic's flour, the four-years-old toddler weighs the girl. His big eyes plead with the children's seriousness and an impatient pout. His chubby little hand lifts his thumb to his mouth along with a wrinkled doll, rag magician but loyal companion.

The upset girl winces and starts dryly, with her fierce teenager voice:

\- "You scared me! But who are you? I'll give you stories!"

Stunned by the violence of the visitor, the little boy backs end flees, his lips trembling.

It's always like that. The visitors have invaded his life. Everywhere these upstarts track him with their vindictiveness. They haunt his castle where life used to be so good.

.oOo.

_In the great hall of the Drunken Goose..._

\- "Well, Eliahel, where are you running to like that? Looks like you saw a huge rat!"

Under the venerable arches of red sandstone, the trembling girl stands as white as a moon of Samhain. Yet in the presence of solid Finran, she calms down a bit:

\- "That was no rat! It was a boy!"

The blond giant tries to make her smile:

\- "All right, you don't like him. But is he worth rushing down the stairs from the attic? Is he so ugly?

\- No, you don't understand!"

Leaving the red wood counter, the scholar Gigolet comes by, alerted by the noisy gesticulations of his protégée.

\- "He appeared just like that, out of nowhere. He wanted the book of Eärendil. And when I cried, he was gone!"

Intrigued, Gigolet asks:

\- "What is the likeness of this stripling?

\- A tiny blond boy. He was sucking his thumb. He was pale. And then there were lots of holes in his singed clothes! When I shouted, he disappeared! "

Finran and Gigolet look at each other. Before the contorted face of the old scribe, Finran, with a bullying air, turns to Eliahel, clicks his sword in its sheath, and launches gruffly:

\- "Come on, my little chick! Your reading obviously blurred your sight... It was certainly Eothor's youngest! So take these pancakes and bring them to your brothers and sisters!"

The girl no longer trembles, or maybe with indignation:

\- "Then how come he did not leave any trace on the flour in the attic?", She grumbles, seizing the plate.

Now Eliahel is sent outdoors, under the healthy sun rays, Gigolet sits down, his face worn. Before the hesitating look of the public writer, once will not hurt, his friend the landlord pays him a pear brandy. With reluctance and weighed words, the altered scribe indulges in his tale:

\- "More often than you would believe, we took a glimpse at a youngster wandering through the aisle of our granary aturned into eschole1. Happens precious parchment disappears for a few moons - still ancient tales of elven magic, such enchantments of Doriath, the charms of Nargothrond or the wonders of Gondolin.

We searched through many tomes. The castle of Thalion burned partly in the year one thousand four hundred and nine of ours age, while the last ruler of Cardolan, King Ostoher, had perished with his ost and offspring. We could recollect the wall housing the ovens and bakery, was consumed at dusk, by an accident of a wench's child mimicking a fire mage.

This tragedy passed almost unnoticed in the chronicles of those malevolent hours, but from that time it is now and then reported a childish specter haunting the remnants of ours venerable mansion, maintained in the illusion that the people living there are only passing visitors, vile usurpers the King will chase on his return."

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 …granary turned into school.


	17. The little princess of the lectern

**The little princess of the lectern.**

.oOo.

_This story is a continuation and the end of the Little Prince of the Bakehouse._

.oOo.

The rain is pounding the dungeon slates. Hailstones hit the fogged window. Squalls utter ghostly moans in the chimney. The creaking castle buttresses on its ancient oak beams, opposing the autumn onslaught, with the mass of its ancient stones, and the inertia of the welter life has cluttered its walls with - the small habits of the inhabitants, their lost loves, their inveterate vices, not to mention several heavy secrets.

Tonight we read. This evening the inn is visited by a prominent character, a grizzled old man, affable but lively, feared bearer of prophecies and tireless fighter of defeatism. All faces turn to the lectern, brought down from the attic. The old house purks up its somewhat hard-of-hearing ear, and scolds its little rowdy commensals.

When Eliahel is reading a tale of old, the common room is illuminated by elven splendors, the vaults populate with seabirds in a sky before the fall of kings, the air carries fragrances of hope from another age.

The girl's clear voice rises as the minstrels' harps once in Fornost. Her grace flies on rhymes, sowing enchantment in souls. The dreams of the audience, quenched by chores, snorting and taking force, don the hero's armor and cherish his banner of justice.

The light verses run under the sun, awakening spring in hearts. The bud of hope and the flower of renewal hatch, grow and exhale bittersweet sap, that their feeder roots derive from legends.

Fresh Eliahel launches the verses of the tale, with a new and bold tone. Yet the archaic language charms the ear with its weathered rhythms. The generations gathered for the vigil, delighted, find in the chronicles of the kings, the echo of their thirst for life, the refrain of their labours and the ferment of their courage.

Villagers and travelers share, during this evening, a little more than a distraction. Throughout the venerable pages, the fatherly figure of the kings of yore extends its protective wing and awakens the pride of the ancient people of Arnor.

.oOo.

Eliahel is reading slowly, rejuvenating a turn or mimicking a posture occasionally, with an innate sense of rhythm that captivates the small community. The girl knows all the rough edges of her beloved pages, softening them with grace. Thus, without unbridling her text, the reader has time to observe her audience.

Her immediate family struts dressed up in the front row, while Gigolet her master, proud as a king's cadet, sends paternal looks to his protégée.

In the warm light of candles, toddlers form a still circle, their chubby faces raising to the girl at the lectern. From time to time they pilfer some forest fruits their elders are sifting, curious about wonders but worried about monsters, which shadows, revived by the tale, are lurking outside.

A little further, the women, their lap loaded with embroidery or stitching, sigh at the disgruntled loves of the court ladies. His thumb in his mouth and his gaze into space, a marmoset, sated with mother milk, is dozing in the plump arms that gently rock him to the rhythm of the rhymes.

The men, at last, in the glowing darkness of the back rows, winnow wicker and sculpt boxwood, nodding to the exploits of errant knights. The old man, sat in a large chair, is quietly teasing his pipe in perfumed spirals, but the alert embers of his pupils observe the audience's moods with interest. Sir Finran scurrily circulates in the ranks, renewing jugs and mugs, and beer invades the tables, just like trolls are spreading from north in the tale.

The room shudders. The shadowy noose tightens on the castle. A kid starts crying. But the royal guard stands firm!

A tall youth, the village idiot, rises terrified from the bench, waving his table-fork against the invaders. The gray old man reassures him with a kind look and he resumes his place among the herdsmen, tasting the sweet knowing heat of the vigil. The obtuse boy escapes for a time his heavy clay thoughts; his spirits, loosed by the tale, commune with his peers in dreams.

On a bench leaning against the wall, two young people exchange tender and playful glances, pretending to listen to the tale. From under her hood taffeta, a surly peasant, chaperone of the girl, throw from time to time inquisitors and discouraging eye shots, without much success.

A young farm boy, hidden behind the pillar, participates in the battle with all his soul, casting spells like this gray magician who sometimes roams in the tale. The little man has probably escaped his mother and slipped into the high room for the vigil.

But the storm is gathering and the hordes of the Witch-king break on Cardolan's rich lands. The audience becomes one, its nerves tense, the boy rages in unison with Eliahel and the bruised kingdom survives the ordeal.

A round of beer, hot drinks and just baked biscuits, comes right to cheer the room. Eliahel, pampered and patted, is sipping her egg-nog among the children.

But when she looks around her little accomplice, he seems to have vanished!

.oOo.

Eliahel must find out for sure. Several times she thought she saw the blond boy lazing in the aisles of the attic above the bakery of the castle. She even wonders if he would not be a bit of a hidden child of the baker and master Finran. Concealing her approach behind sacks of flour, the huntress observes her prey, who is carelessly watering at a source of knowledge, sitting on a pile of dilapidated tomes, stolen from the scribe.

So here is the little villain who steals Master Gigolet's to-be-restored books! Leaning on a heavy leather volume, blondboy seems absorbed in contemplation, his pale, melancholic face lit by a faint smile.

Eliahel is slowly approaching the little player. She focuses on the open book, above the boy's frail shoulder.

The king stands in the center of the illuminated page, his gold brocades ignite the hearing with a glorious majesty. The noble dignitaries, supporters or parasites of his power, encircle the sovereign. His close family, gathered near the throne, seems to look far away to the uncertain limbo of a threatening future.

The King asks the posterity with his mysterious gaze, where the blond boy is getting lost. The pale child, immersed in the image of the past, lets Eliahel lookk at his side. In a thrill from beyond the world, the girl realizes the resemblance of the child, with the hieratic gilt icon that contemplates him across the centuries.

\- "Please, tell me a story!"

In a fragile moment, even silence may not be broken. Eliahel feels the boy's need for connivance - she whispers:

\- "Which story do you want?"

The boy makes a faint distracted grimace:

\- "When a good story is told, the book's images are joyful...

\- I like pictures too, but I prefer tales. In a tale, those who listen carefully all find beautiful images.

\- When I listen carefully, I hear it's my dad who tells me the story.

\- Who's your daddy?"

Again a soft impatient reproach is fleeting for a moment in the eyes of the little boy.

\- "The most beautiful story is my Dad's.

\- I do not know the story your Dad tells you. The story in this book is all about the King.

\- But my Dad, that's him!"

Eliahel startles, not daring to turn to her little companion, who is pointing at the king in majesty. Dizzy-making, the girl can almost feel the cold breath of the boy, who repeats imperturbable:

\- "Please, tell me this story!"

He is sitting quietly, his legs in the air. His pale face is not begging. His eyes are not crying. But his clear and serene look is weighing like a reproach, applying this unconscious right of children to quietly require and grab the essentials.

So Eliahel reads the ancient lines. It is about alliances, war and honor. It reports the hours of the kingdom, great or mediocre - harvests and epidemics, fairs and taxes, the exploits of knights and the disputes of the world leaders.

\- "You telling poorly! The picture is not beautiful at all now! Please, tell me a story where my Dad is happy!"

The thin voice, which rises serious and concerned, elicits a distant need, unfulfilled for ages.

\- "But I've read exactly what is written!"

His puppet mage over his nose and his thumb in his mouth, the child takes refuge in a protective silence. A tear rolls along his sheer cheek, and gets lost in the shadows of the attic. His look, remote and sad, seems not to see the girl any more.

But a gust flows the candle out in a chill, plunging the attic in icy darkness. Covered with cold sweat and distraught, Eliahel felt for the ladder.

\- "Yet I had told you not to approach the visitors, blows a mother's voice, like in a dream. Their stories are sad and wicked. Come, Ostomir, do not cry anymore! I'll tell you the story of Mom and Dad, and if you kindly have your nap, I will give you buns..."

.oOo.

In the courtyard of the castle, the girl gesticulates in front of the old man who takes the sun, sitting on the edge of the well. The grizzled man raises a bushy and inquisitor eyebrow under, the brim of his large faded hat:

\- "A little blond boy? "

Eliahel explains, voluble:

\- "His name is Ostomir.

\- I do not see…

\- I think he is the son of the baker!

\- Really? But Finran and the baker did not... No, you must be mistaken, my child!

\- Well, not our baker! The bker from the time of yonder!"

The wizard removes his pipe from his mouth, squints slyly and stares with interest at Eliahel, who adds:

\- "He is very small, very cute, very pale, and he still sucks his thumb!

\- ...

\- And he never answers any questions!

\- ...

\- And he's always got a rag doll, designed as an old man with long stick and beard...

\- Oh yes? A puppet that looks like me? "

The wizard, intrigued, takes a puff while turning his eyes towards the section of collapsed wall.

The breach overlooks a vast field, on which the provost of Thalion, once had the lists and galleries risen for spring jousting.

.oOo.

Colorful memories arise from pipeweed smokes.

A piper from the South Downs hosts a farandole of girls on the pavement in front of the Castel. With rosy cheeks and a short breath, they laugh and concede their flower headdresses to young men. Plumed pages and squires challenge the ribboned bourgeois.

The King rides along the row of tents, decorated with the arms of bannerets of Cardolan and errant knights of lost Rhudaur, to the lists where his court is awaiting.

The jubilant crowd gives passage to King Ostoher, flanked by his son in arms. The brass tubes burst into glorious fanfare, and all bow to the monarch who sits at the center of the gallery.

Then the jousters advance on their prancing steeds, anticipating the fight. Suddenly a woman rushes to the column, pulling her child under the hooves of a battle horse. The kid had a narrow escape, but the crowd laughs at the confusion that broke up the parade.

The austere black dress of a long neat woman splits the crush of onlookers. Her wrinkled face poses a stern look on those guilty of disorder and launches her judgment:

\- "The etiquette must be respected! Your position at the Castel does not allow you any freedom! Therefore both of you regain the bakery and go about your chores! "

The eldest son of the King intervenes graciously:

\- "Come on, Lady Severine, today is a feast for all of us!"

The duenna tilts reluctantly, while the young man takes the boy on his shoulders:

\- "And you, Ostomir, you'll see better from up there!"

The boy, a laughing blond, seems to share some affection with the prince, like an idolized big brother. The mother sends a grateful smile, and it is with confidence that she leaves her son, proudly perched on the gleaming armor, waving his wizard puppet with enthusiasm.

Gandalf, pensive, expels a puff of smoke. As the memory fades away, the old man uses his staff and turns to Eliahel, with a strange penetrating look:

\- "How could I possibly remember such a distant time? As for you, you should run the hills in the sun. Let the stories for winter evenings! And don't you lose yourself in ghostly mirages. It is not good for mortals, to stretch time indefinitely and remain forever in their memories..."

.oOo.

The following evening, a red moon is rising above the hills when Eliahel walks out to draw water. She sees the old man sat amid the breach, in the rubble of the collapsed wall. A book on his knees, he is softly reading, by the light of the stars. A pale and indistinct shadow stands beside him, occasionally resting his head on the wizard's shoulder.

Eliahel approaches slyly. Gandalf concludes his tale:

\- "So Ostoher, last of the kings of Cardolan, joined his ancestors with his fallen sons. You see, he managed to repel the enemies of the kingdom and can now rest in the domain of Mandos.

\- Why does my Daddy not come back from Mandos place?

\- My boy, he found a beautiful kingdom prepared for him and your brothers.

\- But I expect them!

\- They too are waiting for you...

\- You think I'm allowed to go too, in the beautiful kingdom?

\- Of course! Your place has been reserved for you when you played the fire wizard... It's a great kingdom for small children.

\- But I don't want to leave Mom here with the visitors.

\- You are right. You should perhaps ask Mom to come with you there?"

The boy does not need to convince his mom - she always knows everything, her Mom, she's somehow a witch. The sweet hill-girl takes her son by the hand and Gandalf leads them by forgotten corridors of the old castle. In the crypt of the dungeon, the wizard asks the boy to waver with his puppet. Immediately a large dark door opens, revealing a room from which flows a bright light, warm and soft. Ostomir embraces Gandalf who declares:

\- "Now you're going to follow your friend the wizard towards the light. And when you get there, tell the King, the tales the visitors taught you!"

Mother and son, radiant and transfigured, fade in the halo. When the door closes, an icy breeze blows under the arch, wrapping around the granite pillars. The wizard grabs young Eliahel, who has silently advanced to the door:

\- "No, my child, your time has not come! Do not be sad for them, they have finally found the true end of their story.

\- But I want to know where he is going!

\- You still have much time to live that story! And many people here need you! You will have to live your own adventures, invent your own stories and transmit the gift, before searching the rooms beyond.

\- I'll miss him ! "

Gandalf, squatting, addresses a knowing smile to Eliahel:

\- "Me too. But he is so much happier now, that we will always remember him, with his laughing dimples and his pretty face that never answers questions!

\- ...

\- ...and in the meantime, look what he gave me for you!"

The wizard reaches to the girl, with half a dozen dilapidated tomes. There are more volumes than master Gigolet would dare hope to find.

.oOo.

**NOTES**


	18. The isle of the golden king

**The isle of the golden king**

.oOo.

_At the Sign of the Drunken Goose_

The captain often sails back to Thalion, in summer. There he sells spices and buys tin and bauxite ingots from the red hills. Somehow heated by the hard bargaining of the morning, but satisfied to have concluded a deal with his trading partners, he is seated at the inn, and now treats the great hall with a tale of distant seas.

It is rather pleasant for him just to educate these local pedestrians, to brighten up their dreary peasant evenings with memories flattering the Númenorean majesty. After a good swig of ale, the sea wolf wipes his foamy mustache with the back of his leather glove, and dives with ease in waters infested by legends...

.oOo.

_On board a whaling ship of Umbar, a long time ago1…_

In the cramped cabin paneled with precious woodwork, the ship's officers shared a meal around the commander's square. The boatswain, solid swarthy Southron, greeted rudely and went to take his shift. The commander, tight in his neat coat, gave him a stiff salutation and continued his perorations:

\- "What glorious days, gentlemen! Imagine our radiant Queen at the head of the most beautiful ladies of the island, offering her blessing on the jubilant docks! Imagine our thousand ships setting sail at dawn, custodians of the sea men's faith! Imagine a thousand prows cleaving through the waves of destiny to enslave the enemy!"

The proud aquiline look of the old sailor became distant. His memory was evoking an apogee, a capricious fate had taken away for ages:

\- "Our brave troops, brilliantly commanded, subdued the terror of the dark forces, enveloping the enemy by skilful maneuvers and imposing the superiority of our weapons. Everywhere from Harondor to Umbar, subjugated tribes disowned their abject alliances and ranged themselves alongside their liberators.

Our King, Ar Pharazôn the Golden, gathered lesser men from middle earth. The advent of his universal reign revived our distant relatives and ruled the weak, called by the imperial indulgence, to serve his peacekeeping glory.

The black enemy of men, tamed, swore allegiance and bowed, heavily chained, at the King's feet, after which he was exiled to a shameful captivity. Our King Ar Pharazôn erected a gold column in Umbar, that commemorating these achievements and brought every night, the light of Númenórean salvation to stray mariners. Since then, our fleets remain in control of the oceans and maintain the hope of our renewal! "

The whaler's squeaking rocked the minds of the officers to the rhythm of the waves in the glorious chimeras of their commander, that united their souls into a fervent beam.

The door of the square suddenly opened, breaking the charm. A young man, dressed in the latest fashion silks, made a nonchalant entry:

\- "Hello Company ! So, Commander, still immersed in the glories of the past? It almost seems you have participated in these noble celebrations! Maybe we should dream of... more realistic tomorrows? "

The commander, whose neatly shaved jaws shuddered with offended spasms, harshly addressed his second:

\- "Here is, miscreant, the void that threatens us all when the ethics of men of the sea are trampled. Your cheeky moral laxity should not have you neglect your duties and our beliefs! One day our King Ar Pharazôn will awaken from the abyss, to claim to the world, what glory promised him! Then the men of Westernesse will be freed of the lies of the western Powers and their elven minions. The sinking of our blessed island shows how far these cowards fear us, taking over the blessings of the world for their own benefit. "

The young man corrected his bearing, snapped the heels of his polished boots and declared on a skeptical tone:

\- "What a well worn manifest! Give mankind eternal enjoyment of its destiny, nothing less? While waiting to snatch these coveted secrets, I respectfully suggest not insult the future and to spare the powers of this world. A storm is preparing - dark clouds assemble at an alarming rate. Your presence is required on the upper deck! "

The commander stared at the disbeliever ensign with steel blue eyes, stood up stiffly and left the square, followed by his officers.

.oOo.

The viscous swell bore sinister glows. The foam spread there in scurrilous streaks. In the distance, a dark mass flew over the grey ocean, threatening cavalcade that thundered in livid lightnings.

Opalescent chasms racked under gusts, the whaler took a worrying glide. Already the crew was plagued with discouragement, and waved their talismans to the heavy sea. The commander gave orders, stiff as justice on the quarterdeck. Three of the shift crews got into the shrouds and joined battle as the wind began to howl, while the last shift crew wired the whale pots. Wisps began dancing among the tops, while liquids terror spears rained down on the deck.

The sailors were inspired by their commander's sovereign calm - the mariners furled the sails, hauled the brails and filled the ports. But the strings were barely knotted, a great surf seethed around the ship. A gigantic wave raised its misshapen shoulders and swept abeam, stealing a third of the crew.

Under the deafening outcries of sea spray, the commander himself, fighting at the helm, ordered the sailors to be securely attached, and reinforced the teams at the bilge pumps.

The second-in-command swiftly improvised a solid lifeline along the mast footings. But the hurricane, like a blind executor, was quartering the ship. The masts were soon erased and thrown into the sea, and hauled the ship to the bottom with a supernatural power. An oar leader, a harpooner and several sailors were thrown over-board before the cables could be cut.

Throughout this dreary night, the whaler heaved and drifted on forgotten seas, the crew struggling to survive under the orders of its inflexible commander.

.oOo.

The creaking of a pulley, shrill and insistent, awoke the second-in-command. His head heavy, he straightened up and looked around - a rocky coast unveiled its bleak screes in thick mists. Silent waves gently bathed this unreal shore, while the ship was lying on its starboard side, ripped on rocks, outcropping at low tide.

Some crew members, survivors of this ordeal night, answered the call of the ensign. Haggard and ragged, they seemed emaciated outcasts, escaped from a lost world. The commander was still unconscious, moored to the whaler's bar like a lanky specter on a ghost ship.

.oOo.

When the food saved from the wreck was disembarked, the remaining two officers took counsel and resolved to explore the shore.

The most urgent need was fresh water. They sent several teams who long wandered among the bare rocks, without finding a soul, but with growing unease. Headlands seemed to whisper their dismay, sneaky landslides hampered their progress, faults exhaled a dull hatred of the living. Men feared these rumors, hushed by a thick haze. A hostile will seemed to hover above their heads.

After a few days, it was clear that this land was an island, fully encircled by rocky shores, constantly hidden in fog. The commander solemnly proclaimed that the King's men, heirs of Númenor, took possession of this land.

The officer's assurance worked wonderfully - immediately his men felt relieved from the fugitives fantasies that had appeared through the mist.

Then the men discovered a thin rivulet that was lost at the bottom of a barren valley. Up the dale, they found a source, seeping a bitter water that smelled sulphur. They had to content with it.

Exploring further, the team walked into a cave, the entrance to which stood a large stone statue, that seemed to arise from the sparkling rock. Struck with fear, men worshiped this terrible guard, which watchful eyes twinkled in the light of their torches. The cave was full of riches, worthy only of the treasure of mighty kings of old - ancient gold coins, jewels, weapons of high lineage lay there under the watchful eye of the colossus. This high king, crowned with gold, handed a powerful and greedy hand to grasp eternal glory, followed by an entire people.

Despite their weakness, most sailors returned laden with riches. Some were inhabited by a strange feeling of greatness, others imbued with a heavy sense of responsibility. But fear gripped them all. One of them yet, a solid harpooner, quarrelsome and mocking, evoked in a hearty laugh, the delights of the harem he could afford with these riches, and loaded a heavy jewels chest on his shoulder.

Just after the team had left the cave, the harpooner, all gleaming with gold necklaces piled around his neck, slipped on an unstable rock, and broke his neck after a long fall. His companions gazed his dislocated corpse, floating above a shroud of urchins and diamonds.

The team silently reached the bank. Deep inside some of them, discipline strengthened, but these useless wealth threw the crew in a superstitious depression.

Thus the two officers resolved they should explore themselves the island methodically, without exposing their topmen and harpooners to its evil spells.

.oOo.

The commander and the ensign left the next day. After recognizing the caves housing the treasure, and felt the urgent appeal of the golden King, they climbed long in the fog, surrounded by the dead silence that reigned on the island now. At the altitude where fog dissipated, they discovered a strange refuge.

Luxurious mosaics depicted a refined life, scholar and harmonious. The rooms of the large house, witch walls decorated with rich paintings, were half ruined. Yet broken relics, mismatched antiques and trinkets furnished, as a patchwork that had been recovered from shipwrecks for centuries. They explored the ruins and found a room decorated with many feminine objects, but without ever meeting their hostess. Someone seemed to live there as a hermit, haunting a palace of another age, seeking her fishing net between two marble statues. The two officers, confused by the grace and decrepitude of the residence, recognized many familiar details of arts and techniques, suffering the torment of the exile discovering his devastated homeland.

Resuming their ascension, they reached a wide flat space, empty and silent. The pristine sky, inhabited by no bird flight, seemed to observe the esplanade.

Overlooking the east of the island, a belfry crowned with tired golds, projected nostalgic rays. On the western side, a large dead tree unfolded the shadow of its bare branches over a catafalque, on which stood a strange dark stone construction. Hideous idols sacrificed here the firstborn of many species, while obscene totems uttered abject silent desecration.

Confused and panting, the two officers did not dare imagine the unthinkable. Violent images harassed them as they were trying to collect their thoughts - a majestic couple tore each other under the eye of a dark figure, draped in contained malevolence. The two men came down the slope, unable to formulate the foolish assumptions that gave a lump in their throats.

.oOo.

At dusk, when they reached the palace, a wandering light, similar to the mirages that lure the lost sailors, had them join the antique dining room. The two officers discovered there a sumptuous dinner, which seemed to be awaiting for them. Shaken by such a great mystery, they did not dare turn away and did honor to their invisible hostess. At the end of the meal, the light led them to a room, where they succumbed to sleep.

Dreams of nostalgic grandeur visited them. A high king wearing gold and plumed with pride, seemed to command them to rebuild the Númenorean power. The commander experienced restoring the dignity of the Lords of the sea, with the wealth saved from the rocks and waters of this island. Her cap dripping with pearls, a sublime Queen stood alongside the high King, and seemed to weep tears of diamond, begging them to deliver her from her ordeal. The ensign dreamed himself as a champion of his queen, reviving ancient alliances.

The next day, inhabited by visions of a hieratic glory, the two sailors awoke at dawn.

A hooded and diaphanous figure was watching them, standing at their bedside.

Terrified, they asked what their hostess wanted. A female voice, light as a breath and drawling like centuries of torment, charged them, as a price for her hospitality, to imagine and carry out any gallant deed on her behalf.

The two officers bowed, one for honor and the other for grace, and took leave.

.oOo.

By temperament and conviction, these two men were reluctant to cooperate. Their secret dreams matched too badly. Thus both dedicated to his own work.

The commander chose to consolidate the golden tower, which radiant hues reminded of the glory of Númenor and would guide the ships of his heirs. He managed to make a mortar and gilt the reinforced dome.

The ensign destroyed the dark altar, hurled the evil stones to the sea, and purified the marble catafalque by fire.

But the two men opposed about the dead tree. The ensign wanted to revere it as a relic of ancient times, the commander wishing to burn it as a sign of allegiance tainted with opprobrium.

They drew their swords, and probably the blood of one of them would probably have defiled the catafalque again, if at that time a seagull had not thrown its swift and graceful shade between the fencers. Under the protection of the sea bird arose from the sun, reason finally prevailed when the two sailors realized the venerable wood could help to refit their ship.

Against all odds, so they worked together, mustering the remains of their crew. Within days the trunk had been cut into planks and logs, and brought back to shore. The ship's carpenter, fortunately, was still alive. They built a wooden crane, straightened the ship thanks to tide, and finished the refit. Finally the two most beautiful branches of the ancient tree, gave passable masts.

.oOo.

Finally the exhausted castaways would be able to escape.

Discord, however, broke out about the treasure. The two officers had to exercise extreme firmness to prevent the crew from overweighing with gold and gems, a ship that could not be maneuvered easily.

The morning of their departure, as the sailors were pushing the ship into the water, up to the waist, the mist rose, for the first time since their arrival on the island. As fog was retiring, a hooded shape silently approached the prow, stowed a green bough2 there, and returned to the shore. The crew was so overwhelmed with terror, that the last attempts to embark more gold and jewels were forgotten.

The tide was rising, the breeze was rushing in the makeshift sails, and the ship departed from the island. That's when they heard seabirds, which last roamed the sky with their graceful flight and their joyous cries.

As the sailors were watching the island drifting away, escorted by her new residents, it seemed to them that a high wave came befall the creek, where remained abandoned wealth and traces of their passage. As the wave ebbed, they thought they saw, nestled in the hollow of emerald rollers, a fast swimmer, vivid image of "Tar-Miriel, Queen purer than silver, ivory or pearls." But the fugitive mirage vanished, while the high wave flowed back towards the west, and the mists enveloped the island with their illusions again.

Then the survivors sailed, a moon long, their lives entrusted to the remains of an old tree. The day when the bough faded at the ship's prowl, the lookout announced the end of their torments.

Back to Gobel Mirlond, their home port at the mouth of the river Harnen, the commander and the ensign, who had tolerated the time of the crossing, soon parted.

As you can imagine, this adventure ran in taverns from Gobel Mirlond to Umbar and even beyond! There were many expeditions to the island3. But it is said in the south, that the curse of the golden King ferociously pursued those he found unworthy to covet his riches.

.oOo.

_At the sign of the Drunken Goose…_

The captain spits a smelly chew he was brewing along his story. A young peasant takes the opportunity to ask the fate of the two officers.

\- "Obviously, the cabin boy wants to know if they took advantage of the treasure? All right!

It is said that the captain took power in the principality of Harnen, with his share of the treasure. He became a rather decent sovereign, inhabited by high and old-fashioned convictions about government, even if he failed to rally the rival city of Ramlond. No wife accepted him - too austere, too strict! - But he ruled with rigor and justice, even if his dreams of grandeur sometimes led him to expensive expeditions.

The ensign, meanwhile, a romantic dreamer, joined the Gondorian ranks. They say he became the guardian of ancient sacred places, on the island of Tolfalas."

\- "And you, Captain, did you try your luck?

\- Here's one curious matey! But that's the whole point, the end of this tale! Yet it is for you to answer this! Would you defy the curse of the Golden King, and what would you do with his treasure? "

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 The heaven of Umbar was, during the Second Age, one of the main Numenorians naval bases of middle earth. The imperialist ideology of the island gradually turned the trading post, into a first-rate military bridgehead. When Númenor was submerged, the fleet and the Númenoreans settlers in the harbor of Umbar remained faithful to the ideals of "King's men" opposing the "faithful" exiled in Arnor and Gondor. For centuries, those nostalgic for the Númenorean omnipotence made war to Gondor, until the King Eärnil 1st captured the city in TA 933.

2 Oïolaïre : Bough of Return, a branch of a tree with persistent and aromatic foliage, which remained green near the sea water. This branch was placed as a lucky charm at the bow of the Numenorian ships, usually by a woman from the captain's family. This custom was imported into the island by the elves of Ossiriand. The shoot was a sign of the alliance with Uinen, the maya of marine waters.

3 This « isle » could be the Meneltarma, high montain peak that rose at the center of Numénor before its drowning. But nobody could ever certify this…


	19. The herbmistress

**The herbmistress.**

.oOo.

_At the sign of the Drunken Goose…_

Sat deep in an old chair near the hearth, a large Hobbit was holding forth, from time to time pulling a puff from his luxurious enameled pipe. His large overweight plush character confirmed his confident tone of clan chieftain, that brooked no contradiction:

\- "Of course nay! That is Tobold Hornblower, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, who invented the art of smoking pipeweed, nearly some two hundred years ago in Southfarthing! The best plantations lay obviously there, from Longbottom to the banks of Brandywine, around my family mansion."

Harold Hornblower was full of praise for his glorious ancestor, who had developed methods for cutting, drying and preserving herbs, while inaugurating a genuine Hobbit art of living. Every generation, a careful selection of plants allowed an increase in the quality of the leaves, and sometimes led to some famous innovation, like the roll of pipe-weeds.

This was a secret technique to roll several leaves on themselves with an elaborate overlapping – leaves of exceptional quality and subtly matched varieties. The subsequent leaves-roll made it possible to smoke pipeweed… without pipe, but with an incomparable refinement. Still it was necessary to cut the end of the roll with understanding, and to own the adapted leaves-cutter, since an incorrect cut ruined the pulling of the invaluable object. At the time of Finran and Gigolet, the leaves-rolls were an amazing luxury, that Master Hornblower kept for his personal reserve.

But tonight, sat in the hall in the middle of large white fumaroles, Harold glorified another ancestor, Tobold's mother.

.oOo.

_The Shire, Southfarthing, The Far Downs…_

Sitting under bundles of herbs hanging from the beams of her shop, the robust Hobbit healer glared mockingly at her patient:

\- "So, Agenor, you married young Daisy?

\- Oh, for sure, she's a nice girl... And vivid with that!

\- What folly took you, you old stag? You don't marry a young girl at your age!

\- Ah, with all due respect, affection, that may be neither rushed nor denied!

\- Affection! Now that's all you can wait for, you old weasel!

\- As a matter of fact, if you would kindly oblige me...

\- What is it you want exactly? I'm warning you, I shall not give thee any love philter!

\- I would not presume that! Now I thought about some little pick-me-up... You know, whatever cheers the heat up down there in the right time, if you follow me..."

Alchemilla Hornblower had pretty well understood. She sighed ruefully to the farmer from Frogmorton, a confirmed bachelor who finally, it seemed, had found a use for his fortune.

\- "And what does Daisy think about this cheering-up?

\- Ah well, she is not reluctant... For sure... Since she would fancy petty hobbits... And me either... So if you could fetch me some herbal cure of yours...

\- I'm afraid in your case, herbs are worthless! Agenor, you need something more… invigorating. Now here is what you're going to do... "

At the back of her shop, Alchemilla searched on the shelves, putting aside clay pots and jute bags, which held her herbalist treasures. She was not abused by the alibi of the offsprings, but she gave her patient, two leather bags connected by a cord:

\- "Here are wild boar testes, dried and powdered. You have to dilute two pinches in the broth of an old rooster. And then, Daisy and you swallow the broth, every full moon fasting: children will be born at home every nine months! "

.oOo.

At the Green Dragon Inn, in Bywater, a lonely and tipsy ploughman was trying once more, to extort her secrets from mother Alchemilla.

\- "Herbs to fight an "idyllic coma"? What next? I'll give you one secret!"

The solid Hobbit, half amused but feigning anger, grabbed the fellow by his collar and dragged him into the yard, where he finished in the pigs trough.

\- "You see? When you drink too much beer, no need of herbs, just pour lots of water on!"

.oOo.

A small hobbit was curling up on his straw mattress, watched over by the family gathered under the thatch. Painful whistles accompanied the cloth that went up and down on his frail chest. Alchemilla smiled reassuringly in response to the worried child's look, crushing between her rough palms, some dried bright blue flowers, over a bowl of boiling water:

-"Do not worry! You should breathe this every time your throat whistles! And next moon, there will be less pollen, you will get better! "

.oOo.

When Alchemilla reached her sixties, people had begun calling her "well preserved". Indeed she wasn't uglier than she had been at twenty! Her unsightly, energetic and reassuring face, had not aged. A refrain on her lips, she strode across the Shire's moors, in search of rare herbs, or serving the needy and the sick.

Naturally, the healer's juvenile endurance was accounted on behalf of herbs and complicated ointments, patiently brewed in her hole. But the irascible herb mistress always refused to confide her secrets of youth.

.oOo.

Leaning on her patient, Alchemilla Hornblower exclaimed cheerfully:

\- "So now, pretty Melissa, you feel weak and you want a "food compliment"? Well here's one: Congratulations, because you're pregnant! No wonder you are constantly hungry despite your bounced belly! "

The herbalist care in the Shire, often meddled with midwifery and healing. But what Alchemilla liked above all, was her self-proclaimed function of nagging marital disorders.

.oOo.

The Brandybuck squirmed before Alchemilla, nervously manipulating his hat. The dreaded Hobbit healer had a reputation for eccentricity and authority. But she knew her plants better than anyone.

\- "You want to become a herbalist? And how can I make a trustworthy herbalist, with a wealthy and idle Brandybuck cadet? "

The young hobbit, sheepish and red as a beet, was about to withdraw, when the irascible Herb Mistress changed her mind:

\- "By the way, you have access to the portal of the Old Forest, haven't you? Then I'll give you a chance!"

Young Galadoc Brandybuck was sent to forage beyond the Brandywine, because it is said rare species could be found under the trees near the Withywindle...

.oOo.

Melissa's childbirth had been a long struggle. But, in the morning, the young mother was holding a beautiful little hobbit, her cute little feet already covered with brown fuzz.

Alchemilla, arranging her bottles and towels, tossed carelessly:

\- "She will be called Pilosella! That will suit her! "

Then, ignoring the stunned and indignant air of the parents, she went out to tour her patients...

The herb mistress authoritatively gave, to the children she helped in this world, names of plants that inspired her. That was her strange and only requirement...

.oOo.

\- "Ah, Master Agenor, it's you! I did not recognize you with that wild boar mop of yours! How is Daisy? Her varicose veins not too painful? And how are Artemisia, Bugrana, Marjoram, Burdock, Linden, Bearberry, Chastitree, Hyssop and Celandine? And I forgot the triplets, Asperulia, Astragalia and Agripalma?

\- Wonderfully, thanks for asking! But now, Good Mother... You find not, perhaps twelve children, this is enough?"

Alchemilla did not intend to facilitate the old farmer's task. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms sourly. He continued laboriously:

\- "Good Mother, I can't sleep any more. We emptied the purses long ago1, but my Daisy is very spirited and... I would like to ask you for a cure... to put things in their former state, so to say."

Alchemilla looked at Agenor with commiseration:

\- "And what does Daisy think about that?

\- Well, the children tire her a lot, but she asks for more...

\- All right, come back to me together; we shall arrange that. You'll get my precious recipe to calm your transport. But where did I store it?"

Some years before, Alchemilla had had to administrate some to her late husband. Maybe she had a little pushed it...

.oOo.

The beautiful young Hobbit lowered her misty eyes. Obviously, it was not even necessary to examine her, she was in "interesting circumstances." Always these embarrassed poor girls turned to Alchemilla, even if they were reluctant to venture to her hut, lost in the moors of the Far Downs.

The healer gently patted the girl's hand:

\- "Do not worry, I shall fix that all!

\- So you'll give me some herbs? "

Alchemilla nodded, stood up and took her sturdy walking stick, the one with iron heel. Then, turning to the girl, she flashed a glance:

\- "Yes, this is for a particular kind of weeds! Wait here! "

And she went out.

Two hours later, Alchemilla came back, pulling a scoundrel by his ear. He was about the same age as the girl. The healer had seen them hang together often enough, to be pretty sure of not mistaking the father...

.oOo.

Alchemilla emerged from under the thatch:

-" Yes that's right! Nasty parasites have invaded your roof... "

The energetic Herbs Mistress ordered a fumigation, with leaves, her son Tobold and her assistant Galadoc collected and withered. The smell persisted long into the cottage. The people were a little inconvenienced, but the parasites did not resist.

.oOo.

Galadoc Brandybuck was returning once again from the Old Forest. This time he brought tender cattail shoots. The day had been very trying. He even claimed that the strains along the Withywindle were doing very bad jokes... 2

The herb Mistress could only clamp down on such a bad faith:

\- "No, I shall not tell you what you can cook with these plants! You're not ripe yet!"

Alchemilla, with age, became increasingly authoritarian and secretive, but she seemed to hold a kind of elixir of life, a secret resistance, a mystery of life.

Yet she never revealed it...

Not even, it seems, her son Tobold, who nevertheless shared her passion for medicinal plants.

This rascal had always been her only weakness. Alchemilla often took him by surprise, dreaming about larks, lying on a hillside.

He strolled idly through the woods, returning to his mother, to be forgiven, the plants he could not identify. One summer morning, he returned to the hole, his looks haggard and dreamy. He confessed only to have strayed into a dream, lying on a hillside near Longbottom, in a field of sweet Galenas he was particularly fond of.

Alchemilla watched him closely, and tried to teach him the business more rigorously.

.oOo.

Tobold, whimsical and inventive, hardly gave the impression to assimilate his mother's lessons.

Yet he did not miss a beat, but he updated the inventory of knowledge, in a critical and innovative way, far from the patient and dreary catalog of intractable Alchemilla.

Thus one day, he surprised his austere teacher, by submitting a personal theory. Over the years, analyzing the most effective part of each plant, he had also wondered about the most profitable way to absorb their essence.

Tobold had listed the different modes to administrate remedies, discussing the benefits and limitations of the ingestion of herbal teas or powder incorporated into foods, mouthwashes or gargles, fumigations or inhalations, poultices and lotions applied to the skin, baths.

After many experiments, he had concluded that the inhalation of the medicine in vapor form, assured in many cases the quickest diffusion of the active ingredient.

Only the enema could sometimes compete with this efficiency, but at the cost of insurmountable reluctance among most of their patients...

.oOo.

_At the Inn of the Drunken Goose…_

\- "Then, Master Harold, will you tell us at last the secret of dreaded Alchemilla?

\- I wish I could! But all my father was able to discover, is contained in these few lines from the will of my ancestor. Figure it who may:

_I can promise the usufruct of my coveted secret, to anybody follows the precepts heretofore: The Herbmaster, scrupulous about rules of his art, will collect and prepare his own herbs, varying their origin to ensure their sustainability, experience any potion without abusing it, and reveal the absence of secret to those he founds worthy of it."3_

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 The purses Alchemilla had given to the couple, of course !

2 No doubt the reader does she remember Merry and Pippin's woes, with an old willow in the Old Forest...

3 Gandalf, if questioned about this little enigma, would perhaps make the assumption that the only real fountain of youth secret is to love his job, to exercise, to eat a large variety of foostuff, and especially not to imagine there is any other secret.


	20. Adunaphel

**Adunaphel**

.oOo.

_-…I do not fear either pain, or death.'_

_\- 'What do you fear, Lady?' he asked._

_\- 'A cage', she said. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.'_

_Eowyn and Aragorn, __The return of the King__, Book V_

.oOo.

_At the sign of the drunken goose…_

The captain dislikes children.

Usually.

But this petty peasant girl has got wits and personality...

And above all she appreciates a well told story!

Yet, a story with a heroine, mastering her destiny... a girly saga, so to speak... What a disturbing idea!

But the ocean terror is not a man to lower his flag!

Especially since he has little public today...

So the young girl Eliaher will have her girly tale...

.oOo.

_Numenor Island, peninsula of Orrostar_

The girl rushed under the stone arch of the ancestral mansion, her arms full of shiny fabrics. Exotic silks swept the parquet of the ancient dwelling, as the heavy drapes slipped from the thin shoulders of the girl. Adunaphel(1) spread the rich treasures on the antique oak of the lord's table. As the servants deposited her coffers around her, on a venerable moth-eaten bearskin – souvenir of the paternal hunts - she got ready to defend and extol her purchases.

Perfumes, velvets, spices, balms, satins, jewels, these extravagant riches bore, to the eyes of the outgoing only child, the lure of distant lands. Once a year, the reclusive heiress of the northern highland manor, was allowed to ride down to the royal market of Rómenna, Numenor's largest heaven. There, the heavy ships unloaded the wonders of middle-earth, on large docks teeming with life. Spray bore a perfume of adventure, of many places to explore, of wealth to conquer.

These plots of a distant elsewhere, exiled in the moors of Orrosmere, these lavish promises of an exciting future, were the only luxury to distract Adunaphel's boredom. The girl threw her insolent sea blue gaze to her parents, raising a determined chin, ready to face their recriminations.

But as usual, the bitter old man and the whimsical hostess were quarreling. Yet neither remembered the origin of these bitter disputes. The picky prosaic father was annoyed by the mother's vapid musings. The selfish bohemian wife irritated by her husband's avaricious pedantry.

Sighing with weariness, Adunaphel brought out her treasures. Oh, leaving Orrosmere... deserting its wastes and moors, fleeing its uneducated drovers and travel the wide world!

Cramped in this dark dusty manor, the girl had long dreamed that a bold sailor would save her destiny, deprive the dismal monotony of the desert heaths, to sail with her to a distant glory.

.oOo.

Sitting under the ancient arch of her clan, Adunaphel glared the men who succeeded before her. The contenders bowed obsequiously or clumsily, with awkward homages. None could take up the mediocrity of this pitiful flock, rigged with worn party clothes and wargear of another age, to woo the young woman!

The impetuous flower of her youth had hatched into a beautiful young woman, fiery and determined. At her adorable feet, were gathering tasteless gifts - sheep skins, baskets or boxwood trinkets. Only a few weapons, forged with the steel of her province(2), proved worthy of Númenórean engineering, and found favor with the heiress.

Adunaphel took a jaded look of the assembly, recognising with disdain, the striking effect of her proud bearing and radiant beauty, on this uncouth rabble of enamored males.

On the death of her father, her mother had run away, pursuing her fantasies with the last elves who still attended the western heavens. Therefore the King's Men(3) had seized the domain, suspecting some treachery. The young woman, out of arguments, had appealed to the clan's lawyer, a distant cousin.

From the corner of her eye, she watched her savior, who stood by her side. His aquiline profile seemed to smile at the ceremony, as if the ridiculousness of each contender strengthened his own position, and drew nearer the inevitable bridal outcome. Adunaphel ranted inside, against the smooth, greedy and lustful cousin, but for now only his presence was holding the bailiffs in respect.

Cornered in this ancestral prison, the young woman now knew she should rely on herself only to seize her destiny, and sail to a distant glory.

.oOo.

_Ile de Numenor, port de Romenna,_

Adunaphel, dressed and disguised like a man, roamed in the docks of the commercial heaven, her jewelery hidden tight under the seam of her leather belt. Commodities and sailors crossed in a perpetual mess, nevertheless to supply the beautiful alignment in the warehouses. Horses pawed at the capstan hoists, carts were delivering food, immediately embarked on the ships' large bellies in a dizzying hubbub.

Several times she had to pretend to draw her sword, pushing away marauding troopers and ribald sailors. She was in a hurry to leave Numenor. The liquidation of her assets and gifts, had not gone unnoticed. Her bedridden cousin would soon recover, she had little time.

But luck favors the bold. A not-so-scrupulous looking captain agreed to take her on, for the price of her brightest ruby.

During the crossing, Corumir, a young corsair with a hell seductive scar, killed time with her by exchanging lessons of dock-fight with lute lessons. And sometimes their limbs mingled in melee, in accordance with the sweetness of the tune.

Rocked by the waves in a makeshift hammock, the young woman had seized her fate, and was sailing for adventure to distant shores.

.oOo.

_Middle-earth, Umbar bay, Grand Market_

Adunaphel glared the crowd with all her hatred, chained on the platform. The rebel jolts of her bare breasts were fanning the jeers of the motley crowd. A big fat-lipped trader in rich saffron robe, outbided the prices thrown by a stumpy bully, whose two scimitars were crossed in the back of his shining armor.

Under the mocking gaze of Corumir, the warrior with a gleaming skull won the auction, smoothing his impressive mustache with a fine air of a connoisseur. Adunaphel had been sold, between the fish auction hall and the cloth market, the rich arabesques of which she had recognized.

Stripped and whipped for the pleasure of the crowd, the young woman was crying her destiny, and ruminated a distant revenge.

.oOo.

_Middle-earth, Umbar bay, Vamag Peninsula_

Beyond the arcades enclosing the seraglio's garden, the ocean sparkled in the moonlight. Under the lunar shade of orange trees fragrant foliage, a fountain sang softly.

Kneeling before her lord and master, who was lounging on a soft bed of silk, Adunaphel dragged subtle enchantments from her lute, that night after night, helped the irascible bully to overcome his insomnia.

As the young woman sounded her latest chords, an affected applause came to break the spell, awakening Baron Vamag. The favorite, omnipotent eminence of the harem, jealously watched her influence. The vicious brunette with large doe eyes curled around the master, having the curtains closed by the eunuch in her service. Only his expert care could bring rest to the warrior who reigned hither...

.oOo.

Brutally woken from her sleep, Adunaphel felt a strong hand fall on her mouth and her neck crushed against the eunuch's powerful chest.

Panic seized the young woman who struggled like a panther. Surprised by this opposition, the aggressor decided to get out of the common room, to finish his disgusting task. Tightening his grip on his victim who already weakened, he quickly walked around the garden pond.

But Adunaphel, in a last reflex, strongly tipped her weight across the legs of the eunuch, at the risk of breaking her neck. The mountain of flesh gave a little falsetto cry, when they swung into the calm water.

The eunuch, unlike the Númenorean, could not swim. She managed to get out of the basin, armed herself with a rake that was lying nearby. With a ruthless glint in her eyes, permanently prevented her attacker to get out.

The next day, the eunuch was found, obscene sperm whale floating off, his huge belly in the air, already swollen by decomposition.

He did not fail anyone, since the favorite, strangled in her private room, could not claim him. Horrible lacerations around the neck of the beautiful gazelle, looked like the powerful rings of a snake, that would have snared her in her sleep.

Forgetting these dramas, Adunaphel the survivor was tuning her lute and meditated the ways of destiny, glimpsing a distant light. (4)

.oOo.

Majestic in their sand-colored robes, three turbaned men advanced to meet the Baron. Putting their right hand on their chest, they solemnly bowed their sunburned proud faces. At the invitation of the Lord, the emissaries of Harad's tribes sat with him around a crafted brass tray. Until nightfall, coveting supremacy in the region, the conspirators meditated Numenor's imperial policy, pondered the strength of their dangerous neighbor Borazôn and forged alliances.

Aside the baron, a kneeled scribe noted the talks down, completed a large map of the bay, and assessed the necessary supplies for the coalition troops. Discreetly consulted on crucial points Adunaphel took part in the negotiations, forging the political future of the region.

For several years, the energetic Númenorean assumed the authority of Baron Vamag in his absence. She had begun by imposing its power over the seraglio, then over all the palace internal affairs. Gradually, the baron had given her the stronghold's economic reins. Her deep political intelligence had enabled her to overcome difficulties with merchants, farmers, miners and fishermen, modulating taxes, negociating transactions, ruling harshly when necessary.

Leaning on her plans and books of account, Adunaphel the housekeeper was building the foundations of her destiny, nourishing the desire of a distant power.

.oOo.

_Middle-earth, Umbar bay, near the Borazôn stronghold_

The cavalry of Southrons allies had long since disbanded. The phalanges of Vamag fled madly to their base camp, the pass of Isigir. There Adunaphel commanded the rearguard, in charge of troops logistics.

When news of the disaster spread, she knew her hour had come. The baron had just perished, his skirmishers defeated by the compact formation of Borazôn heavy infantry.

The descendant of Orrosmere's lords proved a worthy commander. Her soldiers channeled the fugitives, providing water and the comfort of an entrenched rally point. Adunaphel showed an inflexible discipline, decapitating here and there recalcitrant sergeants. Her authority, revealed at the crucial moment, allowed to gather two-thirds of the dead Baron's troops. When the heavily armed enemy formation, arrived exhausted at the top of the pass, it broke on the fortifications hastily built by the fugitives.

The allied tribes, flying to the rescue of victory, completed the success of the day, by harassing from horseback, the dismantled troops of the lord of Borazôn.

That night marked Adunaphel's accession to power: a conquering Princess, she had built, by this unexpected victory over her powerful neighbor, a sustainable ascendancy over the proud warriors of Harad.

An unexpected satisfaction was even granted to her: the boorish scarred corsair, Corumir, was discovered an officer of the vanquished army. Delivered to her at sunset, feet and hands bound, the unfortunate tried to flex the new sovereign, but his flirtatious smile was betrayed by fear. He changed tactics, offering his arm and sword. Too bad - the hilt was adorned with jewels the robber had taken off his victim before selling her as a slave.

Adunaphel brilliantly donned her queen role - accepting the gift, she showed her gentleness, by condemning the guilty scum, only to the galleys. Indeed her fleet needed arms. Nevertheless she ruled an additional measure, in order to strengthen the contribution of the condemned. He was previously deprived of his male attributes, which significantly increased his muscle mass.

Perched on the stallion of her victory, Adunaphel the triumphant saw her destiny dawn on the verge of a distant satisfaction.

.oOo.

_Middle-earth, Umbar bay, Vamag Peninsula_

Arrows whistled, obscuring the sky. Powerful war machines were pounding the citadel where Adunaphel's troops were entrenched. Standing on the battlements, the slender steel lady brandished her gleaming sword in challenge to the imperial legions of her native island. Her iron hand still maintained discipline among the faithful battalions, but for how long?

Tar-Atanamir, King of Numenor, tired by defections, betrayals and personal ambitions of his settlers - some of which had taken the lion's share - sent an armada to restore the imperial order throughout the Bay of Umbar. The admiral acted methodically, landing his army and re-deploying his fleet to block the heavens. He isolated his allied opponents with his light cavalry, cutting their lines of communication. His war machines reduced the strongholds one by one, after his invincible heavy infantry had broken the charges of Southrons riders.

The steel lady, the tribes feared and respected, hid her anger behind unwavering obstinacy. Submitting, bowing down before the admiral was inconceivable. Yet tomorrow, assault would be given, and nothing could stop it.

Surrounded in her dungeon, Adunaphel the besieged cursed her fate, fuming with rage under the impassive eye of the númenórean admiral, who was watching her with his spyglass, from a distance.

.oOo.

At nightfall, the shots stopped raining on the gutted fortress. Darkness spread in deep silence, leaving the besieged to their dark thoughts. The moon did not rise that night. A mist crept through the valleys, paralyzing the living with an irresistible lethargy.

The steel lady, at the top of her tower, saw a hooded shape advancing, shadow of terror among the mirages of a night without hope. Had death come personally to avoid her ignominious surrender and grant a noble end?

But Death does not speak. And the Mouth(5) long urged her. Exalting Adunaphel's desire for high deeds and domination, the envoy rejected any end. The Prince of the Night offered a chance. The opponent of Numenor recognized the value of Adunaphel and proposed an alliance. And to seal the latter, He would provide a powerful token. And the future would open to the strong who would join in His just struggle. A high destiny, eternal, waited for the few who dare force glory.

Even driven to the brink, Adunaphel remained a clever woman. The Iron Lady probed the heart of the emissary, as she long had been able to read the souls of men. But the Mouth was not a man any more for ages...

She played her fate. With nothing to lose, Adunaphel took the pledge and became queen and sorceress, forever.

.oOo.

The next day, the assault found no defender. The ruins of Vamag housed only swarms of bats, the attackers could not reduce.

Doubt seized the Númenórean camp. Rumor has it that the Queen, a witch, had vanished in a noxious haze, carrying her troops in the folds of her night cloak, to the elusive heart of the Southron desert.

When the first cases of a strange ailment declared among the assault troops, they began to murmur that the magician had her revenge. The contagion seemed to come from the unfortunate the bats had bitten, who now died in agony. When the admiral succumbed to this unknown disease, the expeditionary corps broke camp, and sailed to Numenor.

Goddess of the nomads of the far South, Adunaphel had defeated her enemies, and her memory would rally her followers to revolt, until the dawn of time.

.oOo.

_At the sign of the drunken goose…_

In the darkness of the back room, an old man snorted, as if awakening from a dream. He emptied the ashes from his pipe into the fireplace, throwing from under his bushy eyebrows, a keen glance to the captain and his young audience. Many details of this story had just been revealed to him. But he alone knew the true end.

Drawing on his ash stick, the old man came to sit near the captain. Stroking his long gray beard indifferently, he gave the epilogue, watching from the corner of his eye, the reactions of the young Eliahel:

\- For decades, the steel lady beleaguered the tribes of Harad against the Númenórean invader - and later against Gondor.

For the pledge that was granted to her, gave an indescribable power. Undisputed mistress of the wastes south of Mordor, she reigned for centuries on its nomadic peoples, as a revered and feared goddess.

The pledge Adunaphel had accepted long preserved her sumptuous body, far beyond the natural life of the Númenóreans. Her flamboyant beauty and fiery eyes subdued all living.

But this terrible token was none other than one of the nine rings of power of old tales. The existence of the steel lady, indefinitely extended by the voracious and insatiable desire of the Great Eye, was dried of her own vitality.

Spear of terror in the inexorable hand of her master, parched spirit surviving a corrupted flesh, Adunaphel the Nazgûl was subjected forever to an inexhaustible thirst for domination, which did not belong to her any more.

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 In the tongue of Numenor : Adun, West, and Phel, the Lady.

2 Orrostar peninsula is well-known for its cutlery and light blades, flexible and resistant.

3 The King's Men were a faction, born in Númenor, which denied the friendship with the Elves. Everything had first started with a need to explore middle earth, then came the conquest of ports, and the domination of the seas, which met with the ban of the Valar - the Numenoreans ships could not dock the immortal land. For men coveted immortality, they suspected to be given to anyone who lived in Aman. The issue of elven supremacy came therefore to hasten the breakdown of the island with its founding legislation, which would eventually lead to its submersion.

4 Did the reader find the murder weapon?

5 Servant of Sauron, who appears as a prelude to the Battle of the Black Gate, in The Lord of the Rings, Book VI.


	21. The cooper's gravity

**The cooper's gravity**

A late response, and therefore out of competition, to the challenge "A character and an apple" of the "Poney Fringuant".

.oOo.

_At the sign of the Prancing Poney_

A solid hobbit was rolling an enormous cask of cider in the courtyard of the inn. The metal hoops of the barrel rattled on the ancient paving stones. Master Perry' carrier, an important liquor merchant in the East Farthing, scratched his impressive sideburns, arched his back to overcome the dungeon steps. Master Gigolet, coming to his aid, noticed some curious pins forged on the hoops of the barrel.

\- Oh! Yes, that's a friend of mine's beautiful invention. I wish I could use it here! But let me tell you that...

The delivery hobbit sat down on the vast marble steps of the main building, wiping his bare forehead. He needed a break...

.oOo.

_Bywater coopery, several years ago…_

Whistling with detachment, Abaloc attached the last barrel in his cart, under the critical eye of his elder brother:

\- Master Perry ordered his dozen casks for tomorrow night. You have time for four trips back and forth!

But young Abaloc had other plans in mind. A certain waitress at a certain inn of Whitefurrows, deserved he would load his cart, a little more than usual, to afford a stop on the way and a little tete-a-tete by candlelight!

Thus the youngest son of the Newtonne family, who was in charge of deliveries, had adjusted the pegs of his cart in order to ensure the balance of four imposing oak barrels.

\- Do not worry! Daddy's tons are solid and the road descends all the way from here to Whitefurrows! Three trips will suffice! Father Perry will pour his fermented juices into casks as planned! You were not annoyed last year by the barrel of "Perrysweet" he gave us in thanks!

The elder shrugged. Indeed, the vintage had left him with a delicious and lasting amber sensation, like a ray of summer dispensed in the middle of winter. His younger brother, though hardly skilled with a cooper's knife, knew how to maintain the network of customers and the reputation of the Newtonne house, expert in barrels, casks and barrels of all sizes, for generations. Abaloc developed his empathy in any inn, praising the quality of the liquors that family production helped to maintain. He had a knack with landlords and brewers, and, though incapable of handling the dolor without injuring himself, he was given credit for a fine gift of the gab.

Le jeune hobbit vérifia ses nœuds, puis harnacha la mule au doux regard résigné, qui savait bien, elle, qui devrait venir à bout des traitres méplats de la route.

The young hobbit checked his knots, then harnessed the mule with a resigned gaze. The gentle animal knew too well, who would have to overcome the not-so-flat road.

.oOo.

Abaloc started the cart, all perky at the thought of the beautiful smile of his beloved. The mule scowled somehow, then trotted softly under the expert whip of the delivery boy. The miles passed quickly through the fresh air of October, under the joyful squalls of passerines.

But what was to happen, proved not long in coming.

Shortly after Frogmorton, the cart began to squeal so naggingly, that even the mule was worried.

Our hobbit stopped, and could only note the damage. Under the cart's excessive weight, a wheel had distorted, threatening the axle to yield.

.oOo.

His heart enraged, Abaloc unharnessed, unloaded, disassembled the wheel, and ran down to Whitefurrows. There he had to struggle with a very uncooperative wheelwright. To help the craftsman adjust and recirculate the distorted wheel, he even had to consent to replace his apprentice, who had mysteriously eclipsed on his arrival!

Finally, after several hours of palavers and sweat at the bellows of the forge, Abaloc was finally able to run back to his cart and on the road again.

But as he passed the inn, he caught sight of his pretty waitress, who shared winks and trays with the wheelwright's apprentice, by candlelight!

.oOo.

Our poor and bitter hobbit delivered his four barrels, had to bow during Master Perry's grumbling about his first delivery delay, and went away piteously. The day was falling on the sweet countryside of the East Farthing, foggy with grim mists of autumn.

His situation was not brilliant. He had eight casks left to deliver, and he would scarcely have time to return to Bywater before nightfall. This meant he would still have to make three trips, because with such a wretched cart, he could certainly not load more than three barrels per trip. But three trips were not possible in one day...

Abaloc mulled the problem over, he could not see how to get away with it. He would have to confess his delay to his family, to stand his brothers' jeers, to apologize to the customer...

.oOo.

Dismayed by all his disappointments, our poor hobbit made a halt and sought a little comfort at the bottom of his food basket. The mule chewed its oat peck, while the clerk leaned against the wrinkled trunk of an apple tree.

Abaloc contemplated the valley, which bucolic appearance and still green sage grove would have delighted his hobbit heart, in other circumstances. Not far away the Water1 unrolled its brown curls swollen with the rains of the day before. A hive nestled at the fork of the apple tree where he had found refuge, cradling our hero with a reassuring purr.

He slowly ate the victuals prepared by Mother Newtonne. Abaloc realised he was missing a dessert when he had his last bad luck - an apple fell on his head!

Not his day. The last apple of the tree was bound for his poor woolly head! A little annoyed, he nevertheless had the reflex to appropriate the culprit, in order to extort a hungry revenge from it.

But the crumpled apple began to roll in the grassy slope, now leaping between the clods, a hobbit at its heels. Despite his agility, he could not catch up with the fruit, which fell into the river. He watched the gilded apple move away, dancing softly on the beer-colored wave.

At last Abaloc had an idea of genius! He was going to use the river to tow his barrels from Bywater to Whitefurrows! By letting them float, tied to each other, he could make one journey in one day and keep his promise!

.oOo.

And that was how young Newtonne2, discovered the secrets of universal – casks - traction, thanks to an apple that had fallen on his head. But you already knew this story? Undoubtedly, a scientist in search of an attractive reputation, will have diverted this anecdote to formulate a minor discovery.

What is less well known, is that on the same day, Abaloc had experienced another essential principle, which says that the attraction of bodies, though universal, is not necessarily reciprocal. Here is a grave founding law, that only a hobbit maid could have brought to light, and which has escaped all our learned plagiarists!

.oOo.

**NOTES**

1 River of the Shire, which originates in the west farthing near Needlehole, flows east through the Rushock marshes, then passes between Hobbiton and Bag-end, before feeding The Bywater pool. After which its course, swollen by all the rivulets of the valley, runs parallel to the Great East Road, from Frogmorton to Whitefurrows, and throws itself into the Brandywine at Bridgefields.

2 Abaloc, whose name uses the radical Afal / Aval - the apple in gaelic - had a second surname Isahoc, so his full name was Isahoc Newtonne. Any resemblance with an English scientist of the 17th century would be pure coincidence.


End file.
